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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611560">The Forest for the Trees</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/autopilot300/pseuds/autopilot300'>autopilot300</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bondage, Captivity, Captured, Coercion, Dark, Dark fic, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Forced Sex, Gen, Graphic Non-Con, Graphic Rape, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Non-Consensual, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Stormpilot, Taken Prisoner, Torture, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Whump, allusions to thoughts of suicide, non-con, original character death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:15:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,039</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611560</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/autopilot300/pseuds/autopilot300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe gets captured by the First Order, and has to make an unlikely connection in order to survive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Original Male Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please note this is dark and graphic from chapter 1.  See tags for more specific warnings. Tags will be updated with each new chapter.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Poe hears his cell door swish open.  He waits a second or two before he opens his eyes.  It is valuable time.  Stolen seconds, where he does not have to face what might come next.  Or work to gather his scattered thoughts, which is becoming more of an uphill task with every passing day.</p><p>He thinks it’s been a week since he was caught.  It’s hard to say.  Night and day are lost concepts, and the schedule they have him on seems deliberately erratic, so he cannot count by meal times, or sleeps, or by the time and manner in which they come for him.</p><p>He cracks his eyes open and squints.  A figure stands in the light of the door.  Encased in smooth, white angles. The bell-shaped helmet, the blank eyes of the mask.  The stormtrooper stands there for a long moment. A long, strange moment, returning Poe’s gaze.</p><p>“Can I help you?” Poe says, at last.  His voice rasps. He’s been screaming a lot.</p><p>The stormtrooper says nothing, but enters, and lets the door slide shut behind.  Stands there, watching Poe.  This is weird. Usually, they march straight in and grab him.  Drag him to his feet, push him, pull him.  Punch him if he’s slow.  Poe shifts in his chains.  Blinks, his eyes getting re-accustomed to the dim light after the flood of the door.</p><p>“Did we meet before?” Poe asks. To puncture the silence, which makes his skin crawl. Those flat, dead eyes.  The stormtrooper raises his hands, and moves to lift his helmet off.  Poe’s heart clenches like a closed fist.  The last time a stormtrooper was weird to him and then unmasked, it turned out to be Finn.  This isn’t Finn.  He knows it’s not.  But still, hope punches a hole in him.  It hurts, as much as anything they’ve done to him.  </p><p>The helmet lifts. Of course it isn’t Finn.  But they have met before.  Poe, without knowing he is going to, presses himself back against the wall.  His hands, chained behind him, are caught in the crush.  He has seen this face.  From over his shoulder, in passing, in a pounding haze of panic and sickness and pain.</p><p>“Rebel scum,” the stormtrooper says.  </p><p>“Yup,” Poe says. “That’s me.”  The breath behind his words gets caught in his throat.  He shuts his eyes.  In fleeting seconds, he dreams of being lightyears from this place.  The stormtrooper’s boots scrape towards him.  He tugs on the chain around Poe’s neck. </p><p>“Rebel scum,” the trooper says again.  He says it strange.  Not like he’s trying to be insulting. Like he wants Poe’s attention, and doesn’t know what else to call him.  Perhaps he really doesn’t know Poe’s name.  Poe opens his eyes and looks up to his face.  The trooper looks back.  There’s an odd blankness to him.  To all of them, that he has seen unmasked.  </p><p>“What do you want?” Poe asks him.  There’s a plea in his voice.  He knows what he wants.  Still, this is different. Wrong, somehow.  It’s never been just one of them before. He drops his eyes. Casts them left and right, looking for an answer or escape. His heart thuds.  A useless, poisonous adrenaline pulse.  The trooper presses a hand beneath his chin and pulls his face up.  Poe hears the armour on his finger joints click. </p><p>Still, the trooper only stares.  Stares, like looking at Poe will answer some question he has.</p><p>“Do I have something on me?” Poe asks, at last.</p><p>“Shut up,” the trooper says. He lets go of Poe’s chin and moves away. Starts unbuckling his armour.  That is why he’s here, then.  Poe exhales, trying to do it slow so it calms him down.  It doesn’t work.  You’d think he’d be getting used to it, but every time it’s worse. He struggles against his chains. His shoulders burn.  The chain around his neck is linked to the wall, and holds him so he has to sit or kneel.  It puts him at a very awkward height, when the trooper turns back towards him with his dick hanging out. </p><p>Poe turns his face away. No one’s tried this on him yet. From the corner of his eye, he sees the trooper working his hand on his cock.  He’s not even hard, not until he’s stroked it a few times.  It comes to life a little then.  About half-way.</p><p>“If you’re not in the mood, that’s fine by me,” Poe says. He’s talking half to himself. Talking just to talk, to chase back the panic rising in his chest. They usually ignore him.  Hurt him for it, sometimes.  He’s been gagged a time or two. But this one seems to take his words to heart. He stops, hand still on his drooping cock.  Poe feels his heavy gaze, all over him again.  He looks the trooper in the eye.</p><p>“What?” he says. “Seriously. What?” </p><p>The trooper lets go of himself. Kneels, so he is eye to eye with Poe. Poe swallows, and scrunches himself back against the wall.</p><p>“You remember me,” the trooper says. “You know me.”</p><p>“I guess,” Poe says. “Not really.  More than I’d like.” What do you say to someone whose only acquaintance with you is that they were one of a gang who held you down and took it in turns to stick their dick up your ass?  He shakes his head.  This is worse than fucked up.  He feels like he is coming undone.  The vital threads of himself are fraying loose.</p><p>“Where you come from,” the trooper says. “Are there trees?”</p><p>“What?” Poe thinks he didn’t hear right.  </p><p>“Trees,” the trooper says. He puts a weight on the word.  It seems important to him.  “Are there trees? Where you live?”</p><p>“Yes,” Poe says.  “Lots of trees.” Too late, he wonders if this is a ruse.  Some weird ploy to make him talk about the Resistance base. To take it from him, piece by tiny piece. But <i>trees</i> hardly narrows it down, and besides he’d been thinking of Yavin IV, not Ajan Kloss.  There are trees every way you turn.  He waits for another question.  But the trooper simply nods, and stands. His hand goes to his cock again, and rubs.</p><p><i>What the fuck.</i> Poe feels a new, creeping terror, that he may be in the company of someone who is genuinely unhinged.  The trooper’s cock is starting to rise.  It is inches from his face, the head of it with its blind eye bobbing with the rhythm of the trooper’s hand.  Poe swallows and sets his jaw.</p><p>“I’ll bite,” he says. “I’ll fucking bite.” He’s ready to. No consequence could change his mind. He will die in this cell, when he’s no longer useful or fun.  If that happens sooner, so what?  There’s no Finn here. No rescue coming, not this time.  The Resistance simply does not have the means or the manpower, not since Crait and everything that came before. He knows about costly ventures now.  </p><p>“I’ll break your jaw.” The trooper’s voice is flat and matter-of-fact. Poe’s resistance isn’t real to him. Just an inconvenience, to be managed however works best. The trooper sighs.  His hand works on his cock.</p><p>“There were trees where I come from too,” he says.  Poe looks up at the trooper’s face.  He feels unreal. Wonders if he’s been hit on the head too many times.  If lack of good sleep is starting to send him mad. The trooper is staring at the wall, his eyes half closed. A thought occurs to Poe.</p><p>“Are you supposed to be here?  Did they send you?  Or did you just come on your own?”</p><p>The trooper wraps his hand around the chain that links to Poe’s neck and yanks it, hard.  The pressure catches Poe right in the sensitive hollow of his throat.  He painfully gulps. Breathes through his mouth. Still, that was as good as a <i>yes</i>, and it explains a lot of the weird. This stormtrooper has gone off-script. </p><p>“It’s okay,” Poe says.  “It’s nice. A social call. Why not?” Lots of reasons why not. Not least, the dick waving in his face. Still, he feels the first real stir of hope since he was caught. This is the first thing to happen to him that’s not been entirely under the crushing control of the First Order. There must be a way this can work for him. Some chance, that he can’t yet see the shape of.</p><p>The trooper jerks his chain again. “You talk too much. I didn’t come to talk. You’re rebel scum.”</p><p>“So you said. What’s your name? I’m Poe.  You probably should have introduced yourself before… well, you know. Guess they don’t teach you manners at stormtrooper school.” He’s babbling, he knows. The trooper takes hold of Poe’s jaw and shoves his cock towards Poe’s mouth.  Poe jerks his head backwards, hard enough to hit the wall, but it loosens the trooper’s grip. He twists his head to the side.  </p><p>“You’re not going to tell me your name?” he says.  The trooper’s cock bumps his cheek. It feels unclean and he twists his mouth.  The trooper uses one hand to grip Poe’s hair, and with the other drags Poe’s chain upwards, stopping his breath for a second or two. Poe is left retching and gasping like a fish on a line.</p><p>“Still no name?” he says, when he can.  He no longer cares what the answer is. Just picking a fight. Stalling for time. Some small, cruel part of him poking, because he knows this man likely has no name, or not one that’s of any use. </p><p>The trooper presses his gloved hand against Poe’s jaw. Grips Poe’s chin and pulls it upwards to look him in the face.  </p><p>“TR-2733. Happy now?” </p><p>Poe feels winded. Catapulted back to the time when he asked Finn the same question, and his answer made Poe’s stomach drop like a stone. He can’t even say why it hits him like this.  What did he expect? But suddenly there’s a lump in his throat that he can hardly speak past.</p><p>“No,” he says. “No. I know they don’t teach you guys about happy, but this isn’t it.”</p><p>TR-2733 looks annoyed. Which might not bode well, but it’s the most human emotion that Poe’s seen him show.  What’s more, his cock is losing the will to live again. Its head is hanging to the ground.</p><p>“Listen,” Poe speaks quickly. “Look. I don’t want to get personal, but you don’t seem that into this.  They don’t know you’re here, right? You could just go. I won’t tell.” </p><p>TR-2733 yanks on Poe’s chain, hard enough that it hits his throat like a punch.</p><p>“Just a thought,” Poe croaks. Still, TR-2733 hesitates.  A frown etches on his face. He shoves his hips towards Poe but stops short. Seems suddenly unsure of the mechanics of what he intends to do.  Poe closes his eyes and steals some seconds while TR-2733 sorts himself out.  Stormtroopers are like this.  Bad at sex, in a way that speaks of inexperience, not just lack of regard for whoever they’re sticking it into.  Fumbling, clumsy fingers.  Over-eager thrusting at angles that just don’t work.  </p><p>“Tell me something,” Poe says. “Was I your first? First person you ever made love to?  Fucked?”  TR-2733 says nothing.  Doesn’t move. Poe laughs through his nose, feeling heavy and sick. “Shit. Is that why you’re being so weird?  This is so fucked up.  You are so fucked up. Don’t you ever stop and think that? Don’t you – ”</p><p>A fist connects hard with his face, knocking him sideways.  The chain snags on his neck, bringing him up short before he hits the ground. He fights to right himself.  Gets back to his knees. Spits blood.  “Shit,” he says, again.  Tiredness breaks on him like a wave. He wants to quit. This happens a hundred times a day.  He never gets to.  </p><p>“Shit,” he says, again. He doesn’t care what he says now. He keeps on talking, even as TR-2733 takes him by the jaw again. “Don’t you ever wonder? Don’t you ever think? Will you ever in your life get to be with somebody who wants you?” </p><p>He means the words to hurt, but it’s like holding a knife that turns in his hand.  Hot tears rise unbidden to his eyes. He groans to himself. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry for what your life is.” </p><p>TR-2733 jerks himself to hardness and presses his cock against Poe’s lips. Pulls on Poe’s chain until he has to open his mouth.  Poe swallows a painful sob.  One that’s not for himself.  He can’t bite now.  TR-2733’s cock sits heavy on his tongue.  Poe can taste him.  Makes a small sound when he starts to thrust.  Can’t really say why he lifts his tongue and lets it lick at the shaft. Why he relaxes his jaw and starts to suck.  It’s better, maybe, than just getting fucked in the mouth.  Might get it over with faster.  But what he really wants, what he strains his ears for, is TR-2733’s escaping hiss of breath.  A small moan.  A mutter that he barely hears, but it’s there.  It sounds like<i> yes</i>. </p><p>This is good.  Not good.  But anything is better than that blank face, that flat voice, threatening to break Poe’s jaw like it’s nothing to him. This is human, at least.  TR-2733’s cock is thick, hard and hot in Poe’s mouth. Nothing half-hearted about it now.  It hits the back of Poe’s throat and he swallows hard. His chest heaves, but he rides it out.  It’s a weird kind of power.  Turns something done to him into something he can do.  Spit spills down his chin.  He breathes through his nose. Tilts his head to take it in deeper.  </p><p>TR-2733 touches Poe’s face and hair. His hands are soft and hard in turns, gripping and pinching becoming a caress, then back again.  He moans out loud, in rhythm with the work of Poe’s tongue. His fingers close like a vice.  “Yes,” he says. “Yes.” And then, “Oh.” Like he’s forgotten something. Found something. He pushes hard with his hips. Too hard, and Poe can’t get away from his grip. He closes his eyes and tries not to gag as TR-2733 jerks in his mouth, and a sticky, salty taste floods the back of his tongue.  </p><p>TR-2733 slumps, panting, leaning his hand against the wall. His softening cock is still in Poe’s mouth. Poe swallows, with effort down his sore throat, since TR-2733 doesn’t seem about to pull out and let him spit.  He presses his tongue to the eye of TR-2733’s cock, knowing it will be a sensitive spot. He’s rewarded with a gasp, and TR-2733 shoots him a look like he’s not sure if Poe meant to hurt him or not.  Abruptly, he pulls out.  His hands are gone, leaving behind the grabbing ghosts of themselves. Poe swallows again, and works his aching jaw.  Shifts his shoulders, which hurt like a scream. TR-2733 puts the armour he has shed back on.  Replaces his helmet without giving Poe another look.  </p><p>“Hey,” Poe says. Clears his throat, and says it again, but he’s talking to the stormtrooper’s smooth back.  The door slides open and shut, and TR-2733 is gone.  “Bye then,” Poe says, softly.  His head spins, and his gorge rises.  He retches, racking his aching body, but nothing comes up.  He slumps in his chains. What was he thinking?  What the fuck has he become?  And why does he feel anything but relief at being left on his own?  Shame, hot then cold, floods his body.  He presses his face to the wall.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says, to the wall, to the empty room.  To his friends, because he has lost himself.  To Leia, who tried to make him better than maybe he’s able to be.  To Finn, because these are his raw wounds too. To all those children lost, who will never know freedom or love.</p><p>He thinks of trees.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was alone when they took him.  That’s something at least. A solo mission to Merex Prime, to see a small arms dealer he knew in his spice running days.  Rebuilding the Resistance is relentless work, and he has hardly rested since Crait.  They are losing more than they win right now, and he has to learn how to take that, and try again.</p>
<p>Between missions, back on Ajan Kloss, Leia helps him.  A project of their own.  Rebuilding him from the ground up.  Taking the worst parts of himself, and making them work. He fails so hard.  Fails in his head every day, as he replays their flight from D’Qar, the <i>Raddus</i>, and everything he did.  </p>
<p>Leia is patient with him, but sometimes her patience is worse than blame.  Perhaps that’s the point.  She never cuts him a break.  Good enough isn’t good enough; she always wants more.  He keeps trying because he loves her, but in his secret heart, he sometimes wishes she’d stop believing in this better version of himself.  Let him go back to flying his X-wing just as hard and fast as he wants, until the day that’s not enough and he dies fighting. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter now, of course. Looks like he won’t live long enough for either of their plans to work out.  He thinks his guy on Merex sold him out.  He isn’t sure, but Lim was squirrelly and weird when Poe met him, and he got pinched just streets away on his way out.</p>
<p>The funny thing about torture is the worst thing isn’t the pain.  Not that the pain is ideal.  There’s been times he’s been out of his mind, screaming and begging in ways he’s ashamed to remember.  Alone in his cell, he uses Leia’s voice to help him to forgive himself.  </p>
<p>Nor is it the fear, though that’s bad too. Anticipation has steel claws. He has been waiting for Kylo Ren to come and do that <i>thing</i> to him again.  That thing where he rips Poe open, with fingers that tear but don’t touch.  Flicks through his thoughts like a book, and takes what he can use to destroy the people Poe loves.  Poe doesn’t think he can take that a second time.  His mind will be torn for good.  </p>
<p>But Kylo Ren hasn’t come. Maybe he’s on his way. Maybe he’s busy elsewhere. Maybe he has no further interest in the contents of Poe’s head. Who knows?  But even absent, the terror of him has done its work.  Because terror is hard. It’s draining, body and mind, and it’s cost him a lot, in strength he could have saved.  </p>
<p>Not that it would do him much good. It makes no difference if he’s strong.  If he follows Leia’s teaching. <i>Be patient. Keep your temper. Think.</i> He can do all that, or he can lose his shit in the worst way, and it’s just the same.  They strap him down. Tie him down.  Shock him, beat him, choke him, force him, break him over and over again, and he can’t ever stop them or make them quit.</p>
<p>They don’t ask him questions much.  That’s part of what makes it bad.  Questions would give him something to fight against. He could resist.  Hold onto some kind of power, some sense of himself. Something that’s his, that they can’t have.  When they hurt him just to hurt him, they don’t even let him have that.  He’s nothing to them.  He becomes nothing.  </p>
<p>That’s the worst. He’s becoming what they make him. A non-person.  He’s been lost before, but not like this. He’s not himself anymore. He’s falling apart, in horrible slow motion, forced to witness himself. He doesn’t mean it to happen.  Doesn’t let it. Tries to fight.  But like everything else in this world of pain, it doesn’t matter if he fights.  It will happen if he fights it or not.  </p>
<p>He thinks of Finn, often. He thinks of all his friends. His squadron, BB-8, his dad, his mom.  He thinks of Leia when he’s still trying to save himself, but everything she did for him is coming undone, and it hurts too much. So, he thinks of Finn. Weird, really, when he hasn’t even known him for that long. They were building something too, the two of them. A friendship. A hope, on his part at least, that one day it could be something more. It was good while they had it. He’s sorry it’s gone.  </p>
<p>There’s something they’ve all been guilty of, with Finn. Thinking he’s exceptional. He is exceptional. In so many ways, but that’s not the point. Poe didn’t really get it, not on the level of his gut. This is what the First Order does. Makes people into non-people.  Puts them in masks.  He thinks he hears screaming, everywhere he turns.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You again?” Poe says, when the door slides open, and he sees a figure, standing alone. He squints in the shafting light.  They have been burning him today. Wounds on his stomach and thighs pulse with dull pain.  TR-2733 steps in wordless, just as he did before. Despite the helmet, Poe is sure it is him. The shape of him, the way he stands.  The silent gaze.</p><p>Poe drops his eyes.  Wishes he could fade back into the wall. Whatever TR-2733 is here for, he does not have the strength.  Since their last encounter, he’s mostly felt numb, though he knows the numbness for a false face, like a stormtrooper’s mask. There is something brewing underneath, but he has stamped it down so thoroughly that now he cannot find it. He has sat alone in the dark and tried to rage, tried to cry, and found he cannot.  </p><p>TR-2733 moves towards him. The door slides shut.</p><p>“Another social call?” Poe says. There’s a slight hesitation in TR-2733’s step.  Poe notes it abstractly. Some automatic part of himself, still looking for any small advantage. Hope is a bodily reflex.  He wishes it would stop. He raises his eyes to look at TR-2733’s face. At the helmet which hides it.</p><p>“About what happened last time,” Poe says. “I did that for me. Not for you. Just so you know. In case you thought I might be into this.  I’m not.” </p><p>TR-2733 grips Poe’s face. His fingers pinch. Harder than they have to. Perhaps his feelings are hurt. <i>Good</i>, Poe thinks. He moves to turn his face away, and TR-2733 lets him go. Starts stripping off his armour. Down to his vest and shorts.  Poe feels a dull thud of panic, deep in his gut like an old wound.   </p><p>“Again?” he says. It feels like a heavy word. Like a boot between his shoulder blades, pushing him down.  TR-2733 still hasn’t taken his helmet off. <i>Weirdo</i>, Poe wants to tell him. He seems to have discovered a mean streak inside himself. He’d like nothing more than to cover his own face. He shifts in his chains, a useless protest. His shoulder bones grind. He can’t feel his arms. The chain around his neck sits on raw, chafed skin.  </p><p>“How about you unchain me?” he asks, without much hope. “C’mon. I’m not going to escape. I can’t go anywhere.  I can’t fight.” It’s true. If he had the strength to try, he’d never make it to the door. TR-2733 turns blank, black eyes towards him. Takes his helmet off. He’s frowning underneath, but Poe feels a stab of relief at finally having a face to talk to.</p><p>“Please,” he says. “Just for a minute or two. My shoulders hurt like hell, you have no idea. Do this one thing for me.” </p><p>He hates the way he sounds in his own head. Like he’s begging for his life. He can’t help but flinch when TR-2733 reaches towards him. Freezes when TR-233 touches the chain around his neck and starts to tug at the catch.  When the chain falls free, Poe can’t help slumping forwards.  Goes a little too far, and ends up pitching on his face.</p><p>“Man, that feels good,” he says, into the floor. His neck feels light and free. He’s been chained like that since they caught him, forced to sleep sitting up against the wall. TR-2733 unclinches his hands from behind his back. Poe untwists his shoulders and plants his hands on the floor. Pins and needles shoot through his arms, and as the blood rushes back, they start to cramp. Poe groans without shame, his eyes wet with pain and relief.</p><p>“Thanks,” he gasps. “Thanks.  Ow. That hurts like fuck. I can’t move. Feels great.”</p><p>TR-2733 waits in silence for him to stop cramping and flailing about. Poe, if he’s honest, draws it out. He doesn’t want what comes next.  He loves the floor.  Wants to stay down here and sleep, lying down, like a real human being.  About a thousand years would be good.</p><p>At last, TR-2733 says to him, “Stand up.” The first words he’s spoken since he came in the room.  Poe considers refusing.  Even this small freedom seems to have re-awoken some rebel streak.  But he knows this for a false face too. He cannot win.  He feels like he’s outside himself, looking in.  He fights to stand.  His arms don’t want to help him push up.  The burns on his stomach catch, the skin around them pulling tight.  His legs, when he gets them under himself, feel like chewed up string.</p><p>TR-2733 makes no move to help him, but watches, blank-faced. Poe has no idea if he’s enjoying watching him struggle, or is just indifferent to it.  But once Poe makes it to his feet, TR-2733 reaches out and takes him by the shoulders.</p><p>They are eye-to-eye, then. Face-to-face. Poe can see the faint beginnings of lines around TR-2733’s eyes. Tries to guess his age. Somewhere between Finn and himself, maybe.  He wants badly to speak. To ask TR-2733 something about himself. But he’s been talking far too much.  Losing his filter and giving too much of himself away. He holds his tongue. Sways a little on his feet.  TR-2733 holds him up.</p><p>“You know,” Poe says, at last. “You know, if you helped me to escape, you could come too.” It’s hard to even say it, like holding a knife against his last thread of hope. “We could help each other. I’ve done it before. Another stormtrooper. He lives free now. He has a name.”</p><p>TR-2733 takes his hands from Poe’s shoulders.  Poe has to reach and lean on the wall. He is completely unprepared for the punch. It hits him in the stomach, right on the raw flesh of his burn wounds. He screams through his teeth and drops to the floor. Curls himself up, tears standing in his eyes.  Berates himself with fury for even thinking for a moment that this man could be like Finn. For even thinking of them both at once. </p><p>“Stand up,” TR-2733 says, again. Poe does not. Does not even move. A hand drops on his shoulder, and he curls himself tighter. Grunts, “Get the fuck off,” through his teeth. TR-2733 does get the fuck off. He takes his hand away and drops himself down, hunkering on his heels next to Poe.</p><p>“Lift your shirt,” he says. Poe doesn’t move.  Twitches and tries to elbow him off when TR-2733 lifts it for him, and looks at the burns laid in stripes across his skin.</p><p>“I didn’t know about that,” TR-2733 says. </p><p>Poe snorts painfully. “What the fuck? Is that meant to be an apology? If you don’t mean to hurt me, don’t punch me, you stupid fuck.” </p><p>TR-2733’s face hardens. Any semblance of an expression slides away. He stands up. “I don’t apologise to rebel scum.  You deserve to be punished for plotting to escape. You won’t leave this place alive.”</p><p>“I know it. But neither will you. Do you know it?”  </p><p>TR-2733 kicks him.  Pulls at him and pokes at him until Poe, with a groan of protest, uncurls himself. “Okay, okay. Asshole.” He climbs slowly back to his feet, and leans against the wall.  TR-2733 tugs at his shirt. Twists at Poe’s arm when he tries to push him away.</p><p>“Get the fuck off,” Poe tells him, since that worked before. It doesn’t now, and the effort cleans him out.  He lets the wall take his weight.  His shirt, already ripped and ruined, ends up on the floor. </p><p>“Turn around,” TR-2733 says.  </p><p>“Seriously?” Poe says. “We’re doing this?” His head feels light.  When he moves, the room reels. The edge of his vision crowds with grey. “Fuck,” he says. His tongue feels thick. He starts to slide down the wall. TR-2733 catches his shoulders and turns him around as he falls.</p><p>“On your hands and knees,” TR-2733 says.  Poe complies only because he automatically puts his arms out to catch himself.  Shafts of pain shoot through his wrists and his arms fold up, and he finishes up a dead weight, lying face down on the floor.</p><p>His consciousness clears a little once he’s lying down. It isn’t fair. If anyone deserves to pass out for a while, it ought to be him.  Let TR-2733 do his worst while he isn’t at home.  He shakes his head as TR-2733 tugs his pants down.  He feels like part of the floor. </p><p>Panic and disgust live somewhere inside him, but locked in another room. If he tries, he can feel them faintly, fists banging on a distant door. He doesn’t try too hard. It’s better not to care too much. He focuses instead on trying to make himself somewhat comfortable.  Shifts his weight around so he’s not pressing too hard on his wounds. When TR-2733 kneels between his legs, he moves his knees apart.</p><p>“Are we really going to do this?” he can’t help saying again. He sounds slurry and tired. TR-2733 brushes a hand between his shoulder blades.</p><p>“You want this,” he says.</p><p>“No,” Poe says. “No. No.  But you’re going to do it anyway, so…” He gives a small shrug, shoulders shifting on the floor. TR-2733 pulls his own underwear down to half-mast. Poe hears him spit. Wet sticky fingers swipe across the crack of his ass.</p><p>“Shit,” he says. He wants to laugh or cry. “I was hoping you had lube. I already hurt back there.”  Fists drum on a distant door. His stomach muscles tense.  “Spit again, please,” he says. “As much as you can.” To his faint surprise, TR-2733 does as he asks, and spits again on his hand.  A finger touches his asshole. Pushes a little. Poe winces and grunts.</p><p>“Easy,” he says. TR-2733 spits and touches him again. Poe shifts his arm and presses his face into the crook of his elbow.  Shuts his eyes.  Colours dance against his lids.  TR-2733 lowers his weight across Poe’s back. Nudges his knees wider apart. His cock slides between Poe’s buttocks, goes off target and bumps on the small of his back. </p><p>TR-2733 spits again and slides his hand down there.  Poe feels a stab of pain as he starts to push. He sucks in his breath.  Twists his face in a grimace.  Hitches up his hips, to help with the angle. </p><p>“Easy, easy,” he says. His body is giving way. He tries to bear down with his muscles.  It feels rough.  TR-2733 cock catches and drags. Poe reaches his hand back and braces it against TR-2733’s thigh, trying to slow the speed and depth of his thrust.  TR-2733 lets out a ragged breath. Once he has a purchase, he pushes Poe’s hand away. Works his way deeper.  Lets more of his weight flop against Poe’s back.  Poe is pancaked to the floor. His breath leaves his body with a painful <i>oomph</i>.</p><p>His burn wounds scrape the floor. Every thrust shakes a strangled groan from his throat. He fights to get his elbows underneath himself.  TR-2733 breathes hard on the back of his neck.</p><p>“You want this,” he whispers again.</p><p>“No,” Poe gasps. “No, no. I don’t.”</p><p>“I don’t want to hurt you,” TR-2733 says, as he works his hips.</p><p>“Then don’t,” Poe says. “Don’t.”  Resentment sticks in his throat, like swallowing a stone.  He hates the role he’s been pressed into. Explaining how the world works to this man, who seems like a monstrous child.  It shouldn’t be his job.  It’s beyond him, to unpick all the cruelty the First Order has woven in. </p><p>“I should have put it in your mouth again,” TR-2733 says. “Next time, I’ll put it on your mouth again.”</p><p>“Or maybe just don’t.” Poe can’t handle this anymore. His eyes are squeezed hard shut.  Patterns play inside his lids.  He tries to drift, but the pain is too real. Something gives, and TR-2733 gains another inch inside him.  Heat and pressure pools up his spine. </p><p>“I want you to feel me,” TR-2733 breathes in his ear. “I want to be in you. As deep as I can.” Poe scrunches his face up.  TR-2733 picks up speed. His cock slides and their thighs slap. Poe thinks he’s bleeding back there. </p><p>“Is the pain bad?” TR-2733 asks, a new note to his voice.</p><p>“Yes,” Poe says, through his teeth. “The pain is bad.” </p><p>“Good,” TR-2733 hisses in his ear.  That was the new note then.  Poe opens his eyes. Reality rises like a wave and hits him slap in the face.  Cold sweat stands on his forehead. His heart pounds.  He twists his body.  Tries to fight. TR-27333 takes a handful of his hair and pushes his face downwards. Poe is pinned by his weight on his back, and can’t move him an inch. His arms have no strength.  He closes his hands into fists.  </p><p>“You’re sick,” he snarls.  “You’re worse than scum.  You’re no one. No name. No one gives a shit about you. When you die, you’ll get thrown in the trash.”</p><p>TR-2733 hits him with a fist in the ribs. Fucks harder.  He’s as deep as he wants to be now. Poe fights for his breath. It’s a small, painful victory, that his words seem to sting.</p><p>“Truth hurts, huh? I hope it does. We could have got out of here. You chose this instead. Remember that, you fuck. For the rest of your life.”</p><p>TR-2733 pulls Poe’s head up by the hair, and presses his lips to his ear. “You’re lying or stupid. I don’t know which. Escape is death. For you. For me. You asked me to die with you, that’s all. You deserve this.  Resistance whore.  You spread your legs for me.”</p><p>“Not for you,” Poe says. “Nothing was for you. Not a single damn thing that I’ve done.” The lie sticks in his throat. Maybe he has brought this on himself. By talking too much. Dreaming of trees. Sucking cock. He bites down on his lip. The copper taste of shame.  </p><p>TR-2733 slams into him, sinking his fingernails into Poe’s shoulder. Grinds him to the floor. Makes a noise in his throat like a scream that cuts itself off.  Drags his cock out and drops his damp forehead to rest on the back of Poe’s neck.</p><p>He lifts his weight, and Poe rolls away.  Hunches himself, half-sitting, against the wall.  Draws his legs up and wraps his arms around himself. His eyes feel like a desert, wide and dry.  </p><p>TR-2733 picks himself up. He puts his armour back on before he looks at Poe. Poe doesn’t look back. He keeps his eyes fixed on the empty air. Says, “Go away. You’re done now. Leave.” </p><p>“You don’t tell me what to do.”</p><p>“I do,” Poe says. “<i>Spit</i>.”  He laughs, short and painful, to himself.  </p><p>TR-2733 still hasn’t put his helmet on. He seems suddenly uncertain.  Stands a careful distance away from Poe.  “I need to chain you back up. Or they’ll know I was here.” </p><p>There’s a plea in his voice.  Poe sets his teeth against it. “Not my problem.” </p><p>“It is your problem. They’ll hurt you if they find you loose.  Do you think they’ll care if it’s not your fault?” </p><p>“They hurt me whatever. They hurt me every day. What’s new?”</p><p>“They’ll hurt me too.  Kill me, maybe.  If they find out.”</p><p>“I don’t care.” Poe wants to mean it.  But TR-2733’s persistence is pulling him out of himself. He blinks back to focus.  This doesn’t make sense. “Why not make me?  Isn’t that what you do?  I’m sure you can figure out a way to get these chains back on by force.” </p><p>But TR-2733 only stares.  Poe can smell the fear on him, sharp as sweat. It’s infectious. Makes his heart thump. He doesn’t trust it. These shifts in mood, these slips of the mask, they’re dangerous to him.  He flaps his hand at TR-2733.</p><p>“Just get the fuck out.” But his words have no force. It feels like weakness, like something wrong with him, but he doesn’t want to be the one who gives this man to death.  He tries to recapture the heat of his rage. He can’t do it. He’s cold. Feels like he always feels when his temper burns out. Emptied out, and like he doesn’t much like himself.  </p><p>An all-too-familiar grind. He’s been on a short fuse since Crait. Failure, frustration, things never going their way.  Leia tried to teach him, the same lesson over and over. How to save his anger for when it works.</p><p>“Think of it like rocket fuel,” she told him once. “That raw power is a good thing. Passion. Fire. It gets you off the ground.  But if you can’t control it, then you’re the one who burns.”</p><p>Leia wouldn’t see it as weakness to not want this man to die.  She still loves her son, and he’s the architect of all this.  Poe lifts his head. It’s like shouldering a load. The hardest work he’s ever done.</p><p>“You’re really putting me through it, you know? Do you even understand what you’ve done?  Or is this all so fucked up in your head you think this is love? Ugh. This shouldn’t have happened. Just because I made you feel a feeling, and you made me sad. What the fuck.” </p><p>TR-2733 looks nonplussed. Poe doesn’t much blame him. Nothing he said makes sense outside his own head.  Nothing makes sense in all the vastness of space.  He drags his aching body off the floor. Retrieves his shirt and pants. Keeps half an eye on TR-2733, in case he hustles him for being slow. He can’t help being slow. He’s a mess of pain.  </p><p>It’s hard to let TR-2733 touch him.  Harder still to put his hands behind his back and wait for the chains. <i> Leia, I love you. Be proud of me, please.</i>  His cheeks are wet with tears by the time the chain goes back around his neck. He starts to feel like he has cheapened Leia, to use her like this. He’s used Finn too.  All those things he said, about dead stormtroopers going in the trash. What it does to you to have no name. He knows that from Finn. He can’t take that back.  </p><p>TR-2733 puts his dead-eyed helmet back on.  Any semblance of a man is gone, swallowed up by smooth white lines.  Poe doesn’t want him to leave. Knows it with a horror that gnaws at him inside. He’s never felt this lonely in his life.  </p><p>“Tell me something. About those trees. Any little thing you remember. I don’t care what. I just want to know if there’s something else.” </p><p>TR-2733 just stands there. Silent for so long that the silence itself becomes a living thing. It fills up the room. He finally speaks through the filter of his mask.</p><p>“I scraped my knee on a branch. I cried. Green moss on my knee, and the blood mixed in.” </p><p>Poe opens his mouth. The silence crowds inside. He can’t find his tongue. TR-2733 leaves, and he slumps back against the wall.  Comes unravelled in the dark, with no voice left. He can’t even scream.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His cell is on a ship.  A dreadnaught, maybe.  Something big. He was out cold when they brought him aboard, so he only knows from the deep belly-rumbles of the engine that he feels through the walls. It’s a sarlaac pit of a beast, which has swallowed him whole.</p><p>Today, they dragged him from his cell, strapped him to a table and beat him with sticks across the soles of his feet. If he had plans to walk again in his short-shucked life, he can forget those. He’s been drifting in a red haze ever since.  Starting to lose time, blinks stretching into black-outs. They’ve given him an extra chain, one that loops across his chest. He can’t hang himself now, when he passes out. Is he grateful for that? He can’t tell.  </p><p>The door slides. He does not open his eyes or raise his head, but he knows from the silence that it is TR-2733.  Hears his footsteps quickly cross the floor. The clank of armour. Feels fingers on his jaw.  TR-2733’s hand is gloveless, rough and warm. He has taken off his helmet too. Poe looks him in the eye.</p><p>“No,” he says.  “Please don’t.  I can’t do it again, please don’t.” His words run together.  TR-2733’s face pulls itself together in a frown. His fingers, for once, do not pinch, and Poe finds himself leaning into TR-2733’s hand, letting him take the weight of his heavy, aching head. “No,” he says, again. He mouths it, without volume, without hope.  </p><p>TR-2733 kneels to his level, his hand still on Poe’s face.</p><p>“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.  The words raise a thrill of dread in Poe’s chest. He does not trust them.  They are spoken only so what follows will hurt him more.  But there’s something urgent in TR-2733’s expression.  Something alive and earnest that Poe hasn’t seen before.  TR-2733 cradles his face. Strokes, almost absently, with his thumb on the line of Poe’s jaw.</p><p>“Listen,” TR-2733 says. His mouth starts to form his next words.  The door slides open and cuts him off. His eyes and Poe’s both fly to the square of light.  Three figures stand there, two in smooth stormtrooper white. The one in the middle wears the ordered black of an officer.  He has a blaster in hand.  Poe doesn’t see it until he raises it to fire.  Light flares and cuts the air. Poe feels fire rush past his skin.  TR-2733’s hand falls from Poe’s face.  He clatters to the floor, a blackened mark on his chest pouring smoke.</p><p>“You’re not supposed to be in here,” the officer says. His voice is smooth.  Cold water poured on the heat of the blast. Poe lets out a strangled scream.  TR-2733 moves on the floor.  His armour clanks.  Blood seeps from the cracks in his chest. He looks at Poe. His mouth moves.  </p><p>Poe can’t tear his eyes from TR-2733’s face. He pleads without turning his head. “Help him.  Please. You can still help him.  Get a doctor – ”</p><p>The butt of the blaster thunks across the bridge of Poe’s nose. Hot wet blood pours down his face. “Please,” he tries to say again, but it comes out as a shapeless noise.  The blaster thunks against his forehead. A starburst explosion behind his eyes. Through a rolling haze of pain, he sees TR-2733, still looking at him.  He reaches for Poe from the floor.  His fingers twitch. </p><p>The blaster strikes again and again, and Poe falls in the dark.</p>
<hr/><p>He wakes in fits and starts. His head is a leaden weight, made heavy with pain.  It’s a long while before he can open his eyes, longer still before he can see more than a few blurry inches in front of his face.  His eyelashes are clumped with blood. His sinuses burn and his throat tastes acid raw.  He has thrown up in his sleep. </p><p>The room is dim.  What light there is pokes him in the eyes. TR-2733 is still there, a white and black form on the floor.  Poe watches him for a long time.   He can’t really focus, but watches the blur of his shape.  Waiting to see him twitch.  To see his chest rise.  Poe waits and watches, long after he knows that TR-2733 will never twitch again. He is stilled forever, like a fallen tree. His eyes are open. His blood is dry.  Poe moans in his throat, a horrible grief-noise being wrung out of him. He can still feel TR-2733’s hand on him, holding his face.  </p><p>He talks to the corpse.  Cannot remember afterwards exactly what he says, only that words are flowing out of him as freely as blood. He says that he’s sorry. He says it a lot.  Says he didn’t want this. Of all the things he wanted, never this.  How long did he cling to the notion that they could both escape from this?  Too long, way too long, most guys would have dropped that pretty quick, but not him. He let this connection between them live, and now it’s killing them both.  They changed each other.  Became what they saw in each other. Broken mirror versions of themselves.  </p><p>He says that he’s sorry. Over and over.  Would have wanted anything but this.  It becomes a compulsion to speak, as though his voice could call TR-2733 back from wherever he’s gone, and left his body so entirely vacated.  At last, Poe can’t speak anymore. His lungs simply won’t do the work of making air into words. He slumps in his chains. Checks out of the room for a while. Then he wakes up and does it all over.  </p><p>A cycle that might have repeated itself until the end of time, except the door slides open again.  Poe stops.  A word he didn’t even know he was speaking dies in his throat.  It’s the same officer as before, flanked by two blank white stormtrooper masks. Poe doesn’t know his name. No one here stops to introduce themselves. He still has a blaster in hand, and Poe wonders if he has come to kill him too.  Can raise no spark of protest at the thought.  </p><p>“Hold him,” the officer says.  Not killing, then.  The stormtroopers unhook his chains and pull him from the wall.  Arrows of pain shoot through his shoulders as they untwist. He is pressed flat on his back, a stormtrooper on each side of him, pinning him with hands on his shoulders and wrists.  Poe turns his head to look at TR-2733, now at eye-level with him.  Waits for hands to start tugging at his pants, but it’s not that either.</p><p>The officer kneels beside him. He has something in his hand that clinks, but Poe can’t see past the stormtroopers.  He feels fingers and then cold metal pressing on the palm of his hand. He tries to wriggle, but his wrist is pinned tight. His eyes keep rolling back to TR-2733. He feels a kinship with him, now they are both on the floor.  </p><p>“Hold him,” the officer says, again.  Poe hears the clink of a chain and the cold thing against his palm starts to pinch.  He curls up his fingers but the pressure builds. A bolt of pain shoots through his palm.  Fire shoots up his forearms. The bones of his hand displace with a crunch that he feels to his core. He screams.  An armoured hand clamps across his mouth and he screams against it. His hand is a weighed, mangled mess, and clinks when he tries to move. </p><p>The officer moves to Poe’s other side. Poe clenches his remaining hand to a fist, but his wrist is pinned and his fingers are pried open. He feels the cold metal pinch. Tries to twist, but the bolt of pain hits his palm and passes through his body like a lightening strike. He screams again against the stormtrooper’s hand. Hears a clink of metal and his hands are pulled together. Chained across the front of him with shackles that punch right through his palms.</p><p>The stormtrooper releases his mouth. He screams again.  It earns him a slap round the face, but he hardly takes note. The chain is too short to rest his hands on the ground, so he has to hold them across his stomach. Can’t find a way to hold them that doesn’t pull against the wounds. The pain comes in waves like a blood red tide.  He feels sick.  Rolls his head to look again at TR-2733, unmoved by all this.  </p><p>The officer stands.  Looms over him, like a ship obscuring the sun.  Poe sees him in silhouette, raising his blaster, the butt of it aimed at his face. It arcs towards him as if in slow motion. He has time to hope it will knock him out clean.</p><p>For once, he gets his wish.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Finn dreams a lot more since he is free.  Freedom, he is learning, is a process. A slow release of parts of himself he didn’t even know had been locked up.  He dreams now because he is allowed to.  Allowed to hope.  Allowed to want things.  Allowed to simply wander, within the confines of his sleeping mind.  It takes some getting used to.  And not all his dreams are good.</p><p>Sometimes, he dreams that he’s a stormtrooper again.  That he tries to lift his helmet, but he can’t. That he tries to speak, but the words that sound through the filter of the mask are not his.  The armour has taken on a cold, compliant life of its own, and he is stuck inside. His friends don’t know him. He does terrible things. He is marked with blood.</p><p>One night, he dreams of Poe, chained against the wall of a cell, in a great, slow, rumbling ship.  Finn sees his face, slack with sleep, layered with bruises and old blood.  He knows that Poe is dreaming too. He is climbing trees. A memory of being a boy, on a green moon. The branches sway in a fresh, warm breeze.  Finn climbs inside Poe’s dream and climbs with him.  He likes this part.  There were no trees in his childhood, and it’s good to be with his friend.  </p><p>But this idyllic scene is a false face.  There is pain here too, beyond the good ache of his muscles and the scrape of bark.  The soft wind is a distant scream.  Finn’s hand slips and he falls, and it is not the wind but Poe who screams. Screams Finn’s name. Someone else’s name.  No name.  </p><p>Finn jolts awake. In his own bed, in his corner of the cave on Ajan Kloss, his heart in his ears loud enough to wake the dead.  Just a dream, he tells himself.  But it felt so real.  Poe felt so real. Not some insubstantial dream version, but himself, as vivid and whole as if he was in the room.</p><p><i>He’s on your mind, that’s all. You’re worried. Scared. You miss him.  </i>All true enough. Finn sighs.  It’s still dark, and he tries to settle back into sleep. He can still feel the bark, rough against his palms.  He will climb a tree, he decides. With Poe, when they have him back.  He is allowed to hope.</p>
<hr/><p>The problem is, they don’t know where Poe is.  It took them days to even know for sure that the First Order had him, since the timeframe on his mission was pretty loose, and not even Leia knows exactly who on Merex he went to see.  Poe seems to know some people, in a shady way.  Deflects like a pro if you ask him about it.  Finn means to try and pin him down, when he’s back.</p><p>It’s always <i>when</i> he’s back.  Finn makes sure of that.  It’s never <i>if</i>, not even in his private thoughts.  Poe has bounced back from death once before, and besides, he would never give up on Finn.  He would fight for Finn until his final breath, and Finn means to repay him in kind.  </p><p>Problem is, this level of stern, steel faith requires that he buries a lot of what he knows.  A lot of what wakes him up in the night.  He feels cold through his body when he thinks of Poe in the First Order’s hands. Everyone is worried, of course, but nobody <i>knows</i>, like he does.  There are still places in his mind he cannot go.  Doors that slam when he tries to feel his way through them.  Of course, Poe is not like him – Poe is brave, resilient, steadfast, but the thing is, the First Order hates all those things.  Poe is an affront to everything they stand for, in a very personal way, and Finn knows they will punish him for it. </p><p>The rest of Black squadron flew reconnaissance over Merex until they found Poe’s starfighter, tucked away hidden among the rocks. The command logs show that it landed without apparent incident and has sat there ever since, untouched for days.  Through secondhand gossip, they learn that First Order troops were on Merex around the same time, and that stormtroopers armed with tasers took someone off the streets. Descriptions of the someone are vague.  The locals only care that it wasn’t one of their own.  But it has to be Poe.</p><p>So, now they know.  But the trail is cold.  Leia has mobilised every spy she has, every contact she knows, but no one seems to know where Poe might be being held. Finn feels particularly useless, like this is inside information he ought to have, but he’s clueless too.  His efforts at keeping faith hit a very high wall.  He goes about his days projecting a confidence he has copied from Poe, and inside ringing hollow as a bell. </p><p>He tries to talk to Rey about his conflict, and the depths of his fears.  </p><p>“We’ll find him,” she says, with her firm, small smile, but though she has started her Jedi training, it’s just a platitude, not something that she knows.  Finn almost tells her about his weird dream, but stops himself short.  It was nothing.  She’ll think it was nothing. The product of an anxious mind and an empty stomach just before bed.  </p><p>Anyway, Rey doesn’t know Poe like he does.  His loss is not a physical thing to her like it is to Finn.  Rose doesn’t know him that well either, and with anyone who knows Poe better, Finn still feels like the new guy.  He’s still trying to learn how he fits in, and Poe’s absence only makes it worse, since Poe’s the one who always acted like there was no question that Finn could belong.  And when Poe believes a thing, he seems to make it real, to pass on that faith to the people around him.</p><p>Finn tries to copy that part of him too.  That’s why he clings to <i>when</i> not <i>if</i>, even as his fingers start to slip.  Why he can do nothing but agree with Rey, nod and smile, set his jaw. He does it for Poe, then goes back to feeling useless.  All day long, fighting the urge to fidget and pace.  It’s a small, empty solace that this part of him could almost be Poe’s too. Poe’s not good at doing nothing either.  Before he was taken, he was working so hard to rebuild Resistance networks, recruit, replenish their resources, and when things weren’t going well, Finn would feel it in him sometimes.  An undercurrent of pure frustration, thrumming like a pulse.  </p><p>That’s weird too, now he thinks about it.  Another part of himself that seems to be coming unlocked.  He doesn’t know what it means.  It scares him sometimes. Other times, it happens so easily and naturally he hardly even knows. On some level, it’s been with him all his life, but stamped down, crushed down, like every other part of himself the First Order couldn’t own.  </p><p>It’s probably nothing.  His overactive mind, trying to process too much new stuff at once.  But even so, he thinks of Poe as he falls asleep.  Pictures himself reaching out with the tendrils of his mind.  Feeling his way through the dark, trying to find some sense of Poe.  Night after night, he tries, and finds nothing at all.  If this new thing of his really is a thing, trying too hard seems to kill it stone dead.  </p><p>Then one night, he has his stormtrooper dream again.  Trapped inside his helmet. Breathing through a filter.  Voiceless.  Faceless. He stands in an open door, and Poe is there, waiting for him.  Poe’s eyes widen, a small flash of recognition, and Finn thinks with a surge of relief that Poe knows him, and now he’ll be saved.  Poe will say his name, the helmet will release him, and he’ll be allowed to speak with his own tongue.</p><p>But whoever Poe has recognised, it isn’t him.  The look on Poe’s face is not one that he has ever shown to Finn.  He looks both scared and resigned, the tension between the two drawn in lines that sit around his eyes. When Finn moves towards him, Poe throws his hand outwards in a gesture that means <i>stop</i>.  Bright droplets of blood arc through the air from an open wound in his palm.  They splatter against Finn’s helmet, laying stripes across his visor, running in red lines down his false face.  </p><p>Finn does not mean to move, but his armour has a monstrous life of its own.  It makes him grab hold of Poe’s outstretched hand.  The more he tries to loosen his fingers, the more they squeeze, until blood is pooled between their palms and Poe’s face is twisted with pain.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Finn tells him.  The filter on his mouthpiece won’t broadcast the words, and they echo inside his helmet, where only he can hear.  “We’re getting you out,” he says, as loud as he can.  “We’re coming for you.  We’re close. Just hang on.  Stay alive.”</p><p>But if Poe hears him at all, he gives no sign. He is voiceless too. He does not speak or make a sound, just fights for his hand.  Finn can’t let him go.  His grip tightens.  Bones snap and crunch, so loud that it wakes Finn up.  The armour is gone, Poe is gone, the dream is gone, and Finn finds himself sitting up in bed, his hand outstretched and closed to a crushing fist on the empty air. He opens it with a start of guilt and pulls it back to his side.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says, out loud.  “Poe, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t me.” He hopes and prays some residue of the Force will carry his words back to Poe, wherever he is.  It feels like an empty hope, as hollow as the helmet he was trapped in. Poe didn’t know him, couldn’t hear him, even when they stood face-to-face. </p><p>Finn slumps back onto his bed.  Perhaps it’s for the best if Poe couldn’t hear him.  If the connection never happened at all, outside of Finn’s head.  Because he lied through his teeth, lies and false hope that could hurt just as cruelly as crushing Poe’s wounded hand.  They’re not coming for him.  They’re not close.  They’re as far away as they’ve ever been, and every second that passes is a tick of the clock that carries them further apart.  </p><p>Finn carries this weight of despair with him into the dawn.  Rises with grief in his heart, planted inside him like a knife in as deep as the hilt.  </p><p>But everything changes with the new day.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It isn’t much, but it’s everything, all the same. A cargo manifest for a First Order transport, due to shuttle from the <i>Dauntless</i> to the <i>Steadfast</i> as they pass through neighbouring systems. Two small words: <i>prisoner transfer</i>, and a window of time where Poe will not be held in the impenetrable depths of a star destroyer, but on a smaller, more vulnerable ship. A slim, sliver of a chance, but it’s all they need, and Finn wants to grab it with both hands.</p><p>The plan is simple but bold.  Intercept.  Take out the escort.  Take out the engines. Board. Find him.  Free him.  Fly for their lives.  Poe would love it.  Will love it.  Finn rides on the Falcon, their fastest ship for a getaway.  His nerves sing the whole way, caught on a knife edge between elation and fear for what could go wrong.</p><p>Black squadron takes out the TIE-fighter escort. Finn waits with the boarding party by the airlock, Chewie looming beside him.  They hear the pilots over the open comm, urging each other on, sharing their triumph as their shots hit home.  Poe should be one of those voices.  The thought sets Finn’s resolve, and when the Falcon locks in and they board, he’s the first at the door.  Chewbacca bellows something at his back, and he almost falls flat on his face as BB-8 barrels past his legs and takes out the first stormtroopers from the knees down.</p><p>Chewie bellows again, and Finn remembers his mask.  Raises it just in time to cover his mouth and take a breath through the filter as the first smoke bomb flies over his head and explodes. The transport rocks as the engines take another hit, and everything is chaos, blasters flaring, colouring the smoke with streaks of fire.  Finn ducks his head, fires at white shapes in the smoke, and looks for Poe.</p><p>He runs right past him.  Doesn’t see him crumpled on the ground, but BB-8 lets out a string of urgent beeps that make him turn around.</p><p>“Poe!” Finn shouts.  Over his shoulder, he yells, “Over here!”.  He is answered by a volley of fire in his direction.  He drops down, trying to block Poe’s body with his own. Hears Chewbacca roar in the smoke as the heat of the blaster fire singes his hair.  Poe isn’t moving. His hands are shackled together, and his face is a half-mask of blood. Finn tugs at his shoulder. Tries awkwardly to lift him, but then Chewie is beside him, pushing him aside.  </p><p>“Careful,” Finn says.  Chewie’s answer is indignant and he lifts Poe with ease. Finn runs at his side through the smoke, shooting to clear their way, shouting at the rest of the boarding party to get their asses out, we got him, let’s go. </p><p>Back on the Falcon, Finn supports the back of Poe’s head as Chewie lowers him to the ground.  Poe’s eyes are open, but glassy and fixed, focused on nothing.  He moves a little against Finn’s touch.  Finn pulls his mask off, glad to have the claustrophobic, smothering thing off his face.</p><p>“Poe?” he says. “Poe? Are you with me, buddy?” He taps him gently on the shoulder blades.  Touches his face.  Poe flinches slightly at that, a reflexive jerk of his head, but he does not respond to Finn’s voice and his eyes remain fixed on the empty air.  Chewie says something too fast for Finn’s beginner Shyriiwook, and runs to the cockpit.  The Falcon starts to shudder like an angry beast.  </p><p>“We did it.  We got you.”  Finn’s head is spinning, and he can still smell the smoke on his clothes. “You’re going to be sorry that you slept through this,” he tells Poe, though Poe is not exactly asleep, just not really at home.  The blood on his face is a mix of old and new, some of it still oozing from a series of gashes in his forehead.  Finn touches Poe’s shackles, meaning to look for the catch.  Poe jerks his hands and makes a short, pained sound. His fingers are curled up, and it’s not until he moves that Finn sees the chain is linked by bolts that pierce right through his palms.  He rocks back on his heels and exhales.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says. Coldness washes through his body.  Breathing suddenly feels like hard work, like he still has his mask on.  Like he tried to take it off, and found himself trapped.  He suddenly doesn’t trust himself to touch Poe at all.  </p><p>BB-8, beside him, beeps. Bumps into Finn and breaks his freeze. He’s been beeping for a while, Finn realises, but since his binary is even worse than his Shyriiwook, he’d tuned him out.  He frowns at the little droid, and BB-8 repeats himself, the same sequence of beeps, but louder and more ticked off.</p><p>“That doesn’t help,” Finn tells him.  BB-8 trills out something that doesn’t sound very polite.  Extends one of his tools from his body unit.  Inclines his head towards Poe.  Finn recognises the tool as a laser cutter, and gets the point.  He takes Poe gently by the wrist and turns his palm upwards for a closer look.  Poe jerks again, even though Finn’s fingers don’t come close to touching the wounds. His movement puts tension on the chain between his hands. Finn twists his mouth.</p><p>“You’re right,” he says.  “We need to cut the chain.  But we should leave the bolts for the doc to remove.  I don’t want to mess up his hands even more.” BB-8 beeps an assent.  Sounds a bit exasperated, and Finn guesses maybe that was what he said in the first place. “Sorry.  I try.  But you talk really fast.”   </p><p>BB-8’s reply is pointedly slow, a space between each beep.  Finn lifts Poe’s hands by the wrists so BB-8 can cut the chain. Has to tighten his grip against Poe’s flinch, and winces as he does so. “Easy, Poe. We got you.” He tries and fails at a soothing tone.  Wants to slump with relief when it’s done, and he can lower Poe’s hands gently to lie at his sides.</p><p>“Good job,” he tells BB-8.  He feels a little better himself, like they’ve achieved something, at least.  The feeling lasts right up until he peels back Poe’s ruined shirt.  Poe has barely an inch of skin that isn’t marked by bruises, burns or cuts.  BB-8 beeps a short, deep note of distress.  Finn wants to echo the heartfelt sound.  Instead, he carefully refastens the remaining buttons on Poe’s shirt, and then lifts him and holds him, half in his lap.  Poe twists his body against Finn’s touch. Half raises a mangled hand.  Finn talks to him softly, mouth close to his ear, soothing nonsense, platitudes, talking just to talk, just in case some sense of his voice gets through.  Perhaps it does, because Poe stills a little.  Mutters something in his throat that Finn doesn’t catch.  </p><p>“I know, I know,” Finn soothes him all the same. His eyes keep drawing back to the bolts through Poe’s hands.  To the black blood crusting at the edge of the wounds.  The afterimage of his dream, Poe throwing out his palm and casting a bright red splatter across Finn’s mask.  Shockwaves seem to rock Finn’s body.  This <i>thing</i> of his is real.  It exists outside his head.  It’s bigger than him.  A part of him, but a part that’s vaster than all of known space.  He’s glad he has Poe’s solid weight to hold onto.  </p><p>He touches Poe’s forehead, carefully keeping his fingers clear of the oozing wounds.  He thinks as hard as he can, <i>Poe, it’s Finn.  I told you we were coming soon.  You’re safe. We’re going home. </i> Poe turns his head sharply away, and Finn lets him go.  He sighs. He’s probably doing it wrong. He has no idea how any of this works, not the first clue, and feels stupid when he tries. “Good job,” he mutters to himself. His mouth is still close to Poe’s ear.  Poe inhales with a sharp hiss and says, quite audibly, “No.”  </p><p>Finn nearly jumps out of his skin. “Hey,” he says.  “Hey, Poe, are you with me?  C’mon, buddy, it’s time to wake up.  Tell me I’m a dumbass for trying to talk with my mind.”  He gets no response, at least not right away.  Poe’s eyes are still glazed, scanning without focus, but from time-to-time, Finn could swear they settle on something in the room.  A frown crosses Poe’s face like a cloud across the face of the sun.  </p><p>“Poe?  C’mon, you can do this. You’re with me.  It’s Finn.”</p><p>Poe’s frown deepens. He blinks. Starts to lift his hand but comes up short with a wince.  Speaks, his voice soft and hoarse in his throat.  </p><p>“He… I… I left him behind.  We should…”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Finn tells him.  </p><p>“No, no, I think we can still help him…”</p><p>“Who?” </p><p>Poe’s eyes flick.  He tilts his face up to look at Finn.  Furrows his forehead.  Finn can see the effort it takes him to focus his eyes.</p><p>“It’s me. It’s Finn.” He’s repeating his own name so often it’s starting to sound strange.  Just a formless sound, a noise that his mouth makes.  </p><p>“Finn?” Poe raises a hand towards him.  It shakes with the effort. His fingers are curled into painful claws.  Finn guides Poe’s arm gently back to the ground.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s me.” He feels saved, like by speaking it, Poe has given him back the name he was starting to lose.  </p><p>Poe squints like the light hurts his eyes.  “Finn, they’re gonna throw him in the trash.”</p><p>“Who?”  </p><p>Poe goes to shake his head, but stops with a grimace of pain.</p><p>“Try not to move,” Finn tells him.  “You’re fine, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you home, and Kalonia’s going to give you all the really good drugs.” </p><p>Poe looks confused as hell, like he can’t make sense of that at all.  He looks at Finn like he’s starting to doubt his own eyes.</p><p>“I told you,” Finn says. “I said we were coming to get you.  I said we were close.” The words he spoke in his dream.  He wasn’t lying after all.  He wants to laugh, but holds it in his throat.  It feels like the kind of laugh that might not stop.</p><p>Poe raises his hand again. Stops with it in his eyeline. Stares for a moment at the bolt through his palm.  Looks again at Finn.  Says softly, “I don’t think this is real.”</p><p>“You want to bet?” A little bit of the laughter bubbles out. “How much do you want to bet?”</p><p>“Don’t do this to me,” Poe says.  Finn touches his face, stroking against the grain of the stubble growth around his jaw.  </p><p>“You feel that?” he says. But it’s a mistake. Something hurts, or triggers a memory of hurt.  Poe jerks his head away with a sharp intake of breath. He twists his body in Finn’s arms.</p><p>“Shit. Shit. Sorry.” But Finn has lost him.  The focus fades from his eyes, and after a minute or two, they roll shut.  His body slumps.  It’s probably better for him, but Finn hates to see him go.  </p><p>Finn holds him, his head a dead weight resting in the crook of his arm. He is lulled by the drone of the engines and the rhythm of his thoughts.  They’re not far from home when he glances down and sees that Poe’s eyes are open again. He hasn’t moved, but he looks quite alert, his eyes flicking round the room like he’s taking inventory. </p><p>“See?” Finn says. “It’s not going away.”</p><p>“I guess it’s not,” Poe says.  Finn looks at him closely. Wants to take it as a very good sign that Poe answered him and his answer made sense, but his tone is bland, and his face is without any expression of joy or relief. Or any expression at all, really, until BB-8 rolls back over.</p><p>Poe shifts a little in Finn’s arms, and says, “Hi.”  He sounds surprised.  BB-8 lets out a stream of beeps, and he winces. “Ow. Volume control.” BB-8 moderates his tone, still speaking at speed. “Don’t say that,” Poe tells him. “I’m glad you weren’t.  They woulda done stuff to you too.”</p><p>“Is he making sense?” Finn asks BB-8, who beeps brightly.</p><p>“He says yes,” Poe says.  His voice is slurry and slow, but he sounds like himself.  Finn grins down at him.  Lets go of some of the tension in his shoulders he’s been carrying for days.</p><p>“Just making sure. Hey, Poe. How are you feeling?” </p><p>“Like a dreadnaught landed on my head.”  </p><p>“Yeah, you kind of look like it too. Nothing we can’t fix, though.  We’re nearly home.”</p><p>Poe’s mouth falls slightly open. “Shit. Really?”</p><p>“Really.”  Finn feels his grin widen. He wants Poe to return it, to show some relief, some something.  But Poe just shakes his head softly. His eyes seem to get hooked by an empty spot on the floor. He stares for a moment and frowns.</p><p>“How?” </p><p>“We found out you were being moved.  Off the <i>Dauntless</i>, onto the <i>Steadfast</i>. We got you off the transport. Easy as pie.” </p><p>“Easy as pie,” Poe echoes. His slur is worse. “I don’t remember any transport.”</p><p>“Well, you were on one.” </p><p>Poe frowns again, and shifts. “The <i>Dauntless</i>?  Shit, Finn, I didn’t even know where I was. How did you know?”</p><p>“We didn’t, for the longest time. Then we got an encrypted message. The transport manifest. Someone on the <i>Dauntless</i> sent it. Guess you must have had a friend on board.”  </p><p>Finn smiles at him again, wanting to coax out something other than this weird, detached sense of surprise. Poe stares at him blankly for a moment. Then his face seems to fall apart. </p><p>“Oh no,” he says. “No. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.  I… he… he shouldn’t have. He never should have.  Finn, I think I did a bad and stupid thing.” </p><p>“Shhh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it now.” But Poe’s eyes are losing focus. He’s looking right through Finn.  Folding himself up in his own world of shock. He raises his hands like he wants to cover his face. Can’t lift them all the way. A strangled groan escapes him from deep in his throat.</p><p>“Poe, stay with me. Don’t go.” Finn’s heart thumps, sick in his chest. Poe talks right through him, a rambling stream of nonsense and regret, slurring worse and worse until Finn can’t make out a word.  He tightens his arms around Poe, as tight as he dares. He feels useless.  Burdened with this power that he can’t use. Like he’s trapped inside his armour, forced to watch.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Poe isn’t ready for this.  Time, from his perspective, lurches forward in a series of black-outs.  He just got done getting cracked on the head with a blaster.  Seconds before that, he was chained up and talking to a dead man.  Now he’s somewhere else.  Colours and sounds assault him.  His hands throb, a hot heavy pain that drags like an anchor whenever he tries to move.</p><p>Finn is with him, which he accepts without question at first, since that’s how dreams work.  But dreams are not like this.  His experience is rooted in raw sensation.  It’s his mind which is out to sea, and when it returns with the tide, his body is still where he left it.  With Finn.  Lying sideways on a surface that shudders like a ship.  He feels it as deep as his bones.  </p><p>If this is real, then he’s left something behind.  TR-2733, like unfinished business, discarded on the floor.  Poe feels like he has cut and run.  Like he broke the terms of whatever fucked up deal they didn’t make.  And that’s before he talks to Finn, and learns what TR-2733 did for him.  TR-2733, who grabbed him by the jaw, said, “Listen,” then died.</p><p>He did not consent to the terms of his release, and he’s helpless to play any part in it.  His body won’t work.  He passes out as easily as he blinks.  Loses time.  Comes back to himself as they lift him off the ship.  Too many people, too close.  Too many hands. He can’t fight them all. He looks for Finn.  Finds him at his shoulder.  Their eyes meet.  </p><p>“You’re going to be fine,” Finn tells him.  His face is screwed up.  He looks so earnest, like he’s willing it to be true.  Poe feels bad for him.  </p><p>“Finn,” he says.  He doesn’t know what comes next.  Perhaps the name is enough.  Someone takes him by the wrist and turns his hand over.  The weight of the bolt shifts in the wound.  It shakes a strangled cry out of his throat.  </p><p>“Hold him,” someone says.  His skin crawls.  He curls his fingers closed.  Clamps his eyes shut. Hands hold him down.  Something sharp presses at the soft skin in the crook of his arm, and the darkness takes him like quicksand.  </p><p>He’s gone for days. Asleep in a healing haze.  Only has flashes, where he’s flat on his back, fuzzy and numb.  Sounds creep into his dreams sometimes.  Machine beeps. Conversations that happen above his head.  He starts to live closer to the surface of himself.  Cycles in and out.</p><p>One time, he wakes up and Leia’s there. And it’s like being trapped in a nightmare, because he can’t move.  He wants to reach for her, speak to her.  Beg for her understanding and absolution.  To hide himself in horror and shame. He’s sure that everything he’s done, that’s been done to him, is written clear as words across his face.  She must see something, because she rests her hand on his arm.  She looks so tired. He wants to help.  But he can only watch her through half-lidded, heavy eyes, until the darkness takes him down again.  </p><p>At least he didn’t jolt awake and scream at her to fuck off.  He does that to Doctor Kalonia more than once, as his periods of consciousness start to find a firmer foothold.  </p><p>“Good thing I’m hard to offend,” she tells him.</p><p>“I didn’t mean you,” he says. But he kind of did.  His reality runs on two tracks.  It’s not that he doesn’t know where he is.  He’s home.  He’s just also beset on all sides by ghosts.  Who he knows are not there, but nonetheless have a tangibility that sometimes beats the things that are.  It’s very hard to deal with both things at once, and since he can’t shake the ghosts, it’s reality he checks out of sometimes.  </p><p>And reality has its own problems. He still aches in every quarter, and feels heavy in his body from the drugs.  His head spins and his stomach rolls like he’s coming down from being three days drunk.  He feels helpless, unable to move, trapped on his back as surely as if he was strapped down.  It makes no difference that he knows where he is.  That he’s safe.  That no one here hurts him for their job.  His core muscles clench. His skin crawls. He can’t get rid of the tension in his jaw.  His heart must be doing crazy things, because Kalonia comes over and frowns at the monitor he’s hooked to.</p><p>“I don’t feel good,” he tells her.  An understatement.  He feels like he might start screaming and never stop.</p><p>“Give me a specific.  What doesn’t feel good?” Kalonia is looking at him closely.  Peering at his face, as though she’s trying to read trouble there.  Poe looks away.  His eyes get hooked by an empty spot on the floor.  This happens to him over and over.  He doesn’t see TR-2733. Can’t see the body.  But it’s there.  It has a presence that leeches into real life. He sees it on the back of his eyelids when he blinks.</p><p>“Poe? Can you look at me?”</p><p>“Nothing feels good,” he says.  He keeps on looking at the floor until she taps him on the shoulder.</p><p>“Poe?” </p><p>He rolls his eyes back to her. “I think I have problems.”</p><p>“What are you looking at over there?”</p><p>“Nothing.  There’s nothing there.” </p><p>She raises an eyebrow at him.  “Tell me about your problems.”</p><p>He makes a vague gesture with a hand that’s wrapped in bandages, with fingers he can’t really bend.  “I mean, most of them are obvious.” </p><p>He’s sure she thinks he’s being obtuse on purpose. He’s really not. He just doesn’t know how to start to explain.  Besides, she knows what happened to him.  He has no secrets from her.  She’s seen every scar on his body.  He doesn’t really want to think about the rest.</p><p>“It’s nothing,” he tells her. “I just… I felt weird.” </p><p>He waits, with effort, until she moves away before he looks back at the empty floor.  He tries to relax and lie still, but TR-2733’s non-presence eats away at him.  He has this horrible creeping sense that something bad is about to happen.  An electric prickle that spreads across his skin.  As much as he hurts and feels sick when he moves, it starts to be harder not to.  He can’t stop thinking of his own odd compliance with TR-2733. How much he didn’t fight.  He made excuses for himself, but on some level, didn’t he always hope that TR-2733 might help him to escape?</p><p>Well, he got what he wanted.  A suck and a fuck for his freedom.  He can’t keep still for a second more.  He rolls on his side, seasick and sore, needles and sensors snagging on his skin.  At the edge of the bed, he lets gravity do its worst.  He freefalls.  It almost feels good, the giddy, fun kind of adrenaline rush, then the floor hits him. He lands hard on his hip.  Nearly shakes himself senseless, his lungs knocked empty, his vision crowding out.  Kalonia exclaims, and footsteps hustle towards him.</p><p>Poe sucks in a painful swallow of air, and scoots himself to safety under the bed, pushing with his bruised feet against the floor.  Finds a solid wall at his back, and crowds himself against it.  Kalonia appears in front of him and crouches down.  She’s blocking his escape route, and he barks some incomprehensible curse at her before he can stop himself. </p><p>“Whoa, whoa. Easy, Poe.” She scans his face and looks in his eyes.  There’s an urgency to her that forces him to focus on her.  When he does, she looks relieved.</p><p>“Was that smart?” she asks him. </p><p>“Felt good to me.” His heart is beating fit to burst out of his chest.  He edges backwards.  Raises his bandaged hands in front of his face.  Makes a small chopping gesture. It’s not meant to be a threat, but he sees her tense and recoil.  Just a fraction, but it’s there.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says.  “Just – maybe.  Don’t.  Don’t touch me.  For a minute or two.  I just need to be down here.  Bed wasn’t working out.” </p><p>“Okay.” Kalonia scans his face again. His eyes want to wander round the room, but he keeps looking at her, since she seems to like that.   Her pose relaxes a little.  “Just please tell me you didn’t land on your head.”</p><p>“No, I didn’t.” </p><p>“Good.  We don’t need a concussion on top of a concussion. Anything feel broken?”</p><p>“No.  Just my brain.” He snorts a little. Her questions are annoying.  He wants to focus on his panic, but maybe the point is he doesn’t have to.  “Told you I didn’t feel good.”</p><p>“Yes, you did.  It’s okay.  Believe it or not, this is pretty normal, considering what you’ve been through.  We can get through this.  Stop looking off over my shoulder.  Look at me.  That’s good.” </p><p>It helps, and he gets a bit of a handle on himself.  But it’s clear Kalonia thinks the end goal of talking him down is getting him back on the bed, and that’s a hard no.  He starts to tune her out.  Shuts his eyes and rests his forehead on the back of his wrists.  The wounds in his hands pulse dully, in rhythm with his heart.  </p><p>Even with his eyes closed, he feels drawn to stare at the empty floor.  Sees the blurred shape of a white-armoured body, drifting in the dark.  Kalonia says his name again. Poe bites his lip.  He can’t speak.  If he does speak, it won’t be to her.  He is seconds away from getting caught in a loop again, pleading on repeat with TR-2733 not to die, not to leave him, his fucked-up excuse for an only friend. </p><p>He hears a footstep scrape as someone enters the room.  He knows that step. He knows Finn by heart.  Can’t trust what he knows, because he thought of Finn so many times, and it wasn’t ever him.  Kalonia taps his arm.  He opens his eyes and snaps, “Don’t.”   The room is too bright.  It doesn’t seem real.  </p><p>“Hi.  Uh. Is he meant to be on the floor?” Finn says.  </p><p>“Yes,” Poe says, before Kalonia can answer.  She smiles at him, which seems strange.</p><p>“Good timing,” she tells Finn. “I might need an extra pair of hands here.”</p><p>“What for?” Poe demands.  He doesn’t trust her an inch.  She won’t be happy until he’s back in bed, and if she has to knock him out to do it, she will. </p><p>“Because you’re a handful.”  She looks at Finn.  A bit of a pointed look that Poe thinks he’s not supposed to see. “We’re just working through some stuff here. I want to keep him talking to us if we can.”</p><p>Poe hates being talked about like he’s not there.  Resents it, even though he’s the one who keeps checking out.  He presses back against the wall. Brings his arms up in front of him, crossed at the wrist.  Finn hunkers down into his eyeline.  Poe wants to say hi, but a fresh kick of panic hits him, a tidal adrenaline surge. His heart pounds, a ragged, breathless beat.</p><p>“Shit,” he gasps. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean that at you.  Just… give me a minute. Give me a minute or two.” </p><p>He really tries to make it stop.  Screws up his face and clenches his teeth, and tries to force his heart to stop thumping.  He knows that he’s a mess, that none of this is right. He tries to keep hold of what’s real, the hard floor, the wall at his back, Finn’s voice, but all of it slips through his hands like the crumbling edge of a cliff.  </p><p>He’s seized by a conviction that plants its roots deep in his brain.  That someone’s going to grab him, drag him out onto the floor, push him down, and he won’t be able to fight them, there will be too many of them, tearing at his clothes, and taking turns to force themselves inside him.  His vision doubles and blurs. He cries out through his clenched teeth. Hits out with his useless hands. He connects with the wall, and a bolt of pain shoots down his arm to his core.</p><p>“Poe, c’mon.”  Finn is right beside him, close in his ear, taking him by the arm.  “Listen to me.  You’re going to hurt yourself.”  Poe can’t push him away with his hands, so he shoves his shoulder against him.  But Finn is like a solid wall. He holds Poe firm.  Wraps an arm around him.  Poe shudders against him, shivering like he’s been caught out in the snow.</p><p>“Fuck this,” he gasps, when he’s able to speak. “I don’t know what this is. I know it isn’t real, but I can’t make it stop.  Am I not in control of this fucking ride?” </p><p>“Can you do something for him?” Finn says.  Poe opens his eyes and sees Finn is talking to Kalonia.  The three of them are huddled together on the floor like they’re having a picnic.  The room is spinning off its axis. He sucks in a lungful of air, then lets it out slow.  </p><p>“I need a stop-being-crazy pill,” he says. He leans against Finn, letting his weight slump until Finn has to shift to hold him.  He’s too tired to feel self-conscious.  He feels wrung out like a damp cloth.  </p><p>“I’m all out of those.” Kalonia puts a hand on his arm, and when he doesn’t object, slides to press her thumb on his pulse. Poe is sandwiched between her and Finn, but finds he doesn’t mind much.  Their touch has warmth and weight, which is more than any of his ghosts do.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he tells them. </p><p>“Don’t be sorry, you dumbass,” says Finn.</p><p>“I second that,” Kalonia says. “Poe, if you want, I can give you something that’ll make you sleepy, or something that’ll put you right out.”</p><p>“Are you wasting all the good drugs on me?”</p><p>“I think you can take a day or two off from worrying about our supplies. What do you say?” </p><p>Poe hesitates, his mouth on a hinge.  Feels he ought to say yes, since he’s being a pain in everyone’s ass.  But more than anything, he’s scared of getting pushed back down to a place where he can’t fight.  He presses against Finn mutely, unsure how to express himself.  </p><p>“You can say no to both,” Kalonia says. “It’s not entirely what I’d recommend, but it’s up to you.  As long as you’re cogent, and not at risk of harm, I’m not going to do anything you don’t say yes to. Deal?”</p><p>“Yeah.  Thanks.” Poe lets go of some of his tension at that. He’d been sure this whole shebang was going to end with him getting held down and jabbed with a needle. “No to both.  I’m sorry, I just don’t want to get stuck somewhere I can’t get out.  I know it sounds stupid…” </p><p>“It doesn’t sound stupid.  Whatever you need is fine.”</p><p>“I’m still not getting back on the bed.”</p><p>“Yeah, why aren’t you in bed?” Finn asks.</p><p>“He fell out.”</p><p>“I didn’t fall.” </p><p>Kalonia raises a hand. “Let’s talk about it again in a while. When you’ve had time to get good and uncomfortable down there.  You’re going to stay with him?”  This last to Finn.  “Okay.  You need to call me if he’s not making sense or seems confused about where he is.”</p><p>Poe wants to object, but he can’t really deny he’s been doing both of those things.  He wants to say sorry again to Finn, but he swallows it down.</p><p>“Your old job sucks,” he tells him instead.</p><p>“Yeah,” Finn says. “I had a place behind the waste extraction pipes I used to go and hide. When I’d had a bad day.  You know, in case you thought being under the bed was weird.”</p><p>“I know it’s weird,” Poe says.  He doesn’t even really know why he’s so set on staying here. He just wants a fight he can win.  Slim hope.  His head hurts a lot. He hurts all over, a deep-set ache to his bones.  It suddenly feels awkward that he’s slumped all over Finn.  He moves to shift his weight back to the wall.</p><p>Finn, with some reluctance, draws back the arm that was wrapped around his shoulders. He settles beside him cross-legged instead. “I’m really glad you’re back,” he says.  “I missed you a lot.” </p><p>“Yeah,” Poe says.  “Same.” He ought to mean it with all his heart, but he can’t find the emotions that go with the words.  Doesn’t know why he ever thought of TR-2733 and Finn in the same breath.  They are nothing alike. He is riven with guilt.  None of this is Finn’s fault. All of it’s on him.</p><p>“Did they ever make you do stuff to prisoners?”  The question pops out of him from nowhere. Poe is surprised at himself.  “No, wait. I don’t want to know.  Do I want to know?” </p><p>Finn looks at him levelly. A tiny crease forms on his forehead.  “No,” he says. “I got my first real taste of violence on Jakku, and it didn’t stick.” </p><p>“Good.  That’s good.  Sorry. I knew that. You told me that before.  And I know you wouldn’t.  Ever.  I’m kind of scrambled over here.”  He’s talking too fast.  Too much. He bites his tongue.  His eyes get caught by the empty floor.  Finn turns his head to look where he’s looking.</p><p>“What’s over there?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Poe says.  He needs to watch himself.  If he acts too crazy, Kalonia gets to stick needles in him.  That was the deal.  </p><p>Finn puts his hand on Poe’s arm. When Poe looks at him, he gives a little squeeze, like he approves.  “Hey,” he says. “Can I ask you something?”</p><p>Poe gestures a vague assent.</p><p>“This is going to sound weird,” Finn says. “But did you have any strange dreams while you were… you know… gone?”</p><p>Poe suddenly feels so tired that it’s work to make sense of the words. He shrugs.  “I don’t know.  I don’t remember.” </p><p>“Sure,” Finn says.  “Never mind.”  He does mind, though.  The line between his eyes deepens. Poe feels driven to try again.  </p><p>“Maybe.  I guess. I just… I had to sleep sitting up the whole time, and if I didn’t hold position I’d choke myself, so I didn’t really sleep great.  And then I’d wake up, and… I was kind of distracted.  Lots going on. So I never really thought to remember…” he trails off.  It occurs to him how closely his current pose, pressed against the wall, mimics all the time he sat in his cell.  Finn smiles, a small sad smile at him. </p><p>“I get it. I didn’t used to dream much either.  Or not that I remembered.  Before.”</p><p>Poe wants to scratch at his neck.  He can’t, with his hands. “Why?” </p><p>“Doesn’t matter. No big deal.”</p><p>Poe feels a prickle of disquiet. He’s disappointed Finn, in some way he can’t understand. His head feels too heavy.  His eyes want to close. This is how Kalonia will beat him.  She knows that he can’t stay awake.  </p><p>“Sorry,” he says.  The word comes out slow, sliding off his tongue. Finn squeezes his arm.</p><p>“Don’t be sorry. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”</p><p>But he does. He has a whole world’s worth of sorry, dragging him down to the dark. He pulls his arm back from Finn’s touch.  Half expects Finn’s fingers to tighten, for him to hold on.  But Finn lets him go.  Poe closes his eyes. A thin thread of memory is all that keeps him from sleep. The ghost of a dream.</p><p>“When you were a kid,” he asks Finn. “Did you ever climb trees?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a warm, humid morning, and Finn decides to take a walk.  He pretends he has no purpose, though he happens to know Rey is with Leia, down by the lake.  And if he should come upon them, and overhear some of their lesson, it’s no big deal.  He’s allowed to walk.</p><p>But when he emerges from the trees to the open water, Rey and Leia are a hundred yards away along the shore.  Rey is floating rocks, her arms raised.  They orbit around her as though she is the sun.  Finn is caught by her gravity too, and stands there, staring.  Rey is an energy well.  It’s like the whole moon bends towards her. Then she lets the rocks fall with a crash.  Laughter carries on the air.  Finn suddenly feels exposed.  Like an intruder. He has nothing inside him that can stand before a legend like Leia or a prodigy like Rey.  </p><p>He moves quickly back to the treeline, and hunkers down out of their sight.  He picks up a stone and plays with it, passing it between his hands, while he listens to their voices rise and fall.  He can’t make out words, just the rhythm and the warmth, broken up by BB-8’s tuneful interjections.  The stone warms in his palm.  His skin prickles like there’s lightening in the air.  </p><p>Feeling guilty and furtive for no reason he can name, Finn places the stone on a rock so it sits at eye level.  He takes a deep breath and tries to relax.  Listens to the sound of the water.  Feels the air on his skin.  A bead of sweat slides down the side of his nose.  He twitches.  Scratches.  Tries again.  Stares at the stone until his eyes hurt.  He lets his vision blur.  Breathes.  </p><p>The air is warm, and he draws warmth inside him.  He feels the stone.  The curve of it, the way it sits, the weight of years that went into its making.  The work of the water which made it smooth.  The noises around him, the lapping lake, the calling birds, are suddenly not a distraction, but a part of an interconnected wholeness, a galaxy woven together like a web.  He is part of it too, the stone and him.  He reaches with his mind.  </p><p>A piercing beep sounds right beside him. Finn starts and snaps back to focus.  BB-8 has snuck up on him somehow.  The droid lets out a fluid stream of beeps with a rising inflection.</p><p>“I’m not doing anything,” Finn says.  “I’m just… sitting.  Enjoying the sun.  What are you doing?”</p><p>BB-8’s melodic answer is lost on him.  Finn sighs.  He looks back at the stone, but it sits immovable, apart from him.  A waste of time.  He’s meant to be learning useful stuff.  The only skills he has are sanitation, and knowing how to fire a blaster sort of straight.  The First Order never let him learn anything outside his narrow niche in life.  He’s useless by design.</p><p>Finn picks up the stone.  Lets it sit smooth in his palm for a moment.  Then he winds back his arm and throws it hard into the lake.  It makes a satisfying splash, sending wave patterns rushing up the shoreline.  Water birds make indignant sounds.  He scrambles to his feet.  </p><p>“I’m going to see if Poe’s awake.  Want to come?”</p><p>BB-8 beeps brightly, and rolls beside him as he follows the track through the trees.  Finn has an idea.  He picks up his pace.  Starts to race BB-8, and laughs as the little droid speeds ahead. He can’t get used to this. He’s undisciplined, lawless rebel scum, running for fun through the camp, and nobody cares.  </p><p>In the med-tent, he goes to Kalonia first.</p><p>“Good day?  Bad day?”</p><p>“Not under the bed, so I call that a win.”  She looks tired, but she smiles at him all the same.  Their medical provision, like everything else, is running on fumes.</p><p>“Listen, could I, uh, borrow him?  For like a half hour.  If he’s up to it.  I’ll make sure he doesn’t overdo it, and I’ll bring him right back.”</p><p>“What for?” </p><p>“A flying lesson,” says Finn.  </p>
<hr/><p>There’s an ancient Veridian freighter parked up on the edge of camp.  It’s been there so long it has plant life growing up it.  But Poe says it’s straightforward to fly, and no one will mind if they chip off some paintwork.</p><p>“We could fly that thing into the sun, I don’t think anyone would mind.”</p><p>“I would mind,” Kalonia says. “Half an hour.  Theory only. Do not crash.”</p><p>“No promises,” Poe says.</p><p>“Yes. Promises.”  Finn shoots him a sideways look.</p><p>Kalonia, despite herself, laughs.  Poe’s enthusiasm brings light to the room.  Finn wants to grin like an idiot at him.  Even on his good days, Poe hasn’t been this engaged.  He’s been meeting the world like it’s only half real, sentences trailing off, eyes wandering and latching onto stuff that isn’t there.  But just as Finn hoped, flying is worth coming back to earth for.</p><p>Determined as he is, Poe can’t really walk.  He’s limping off both feet, and Finn has to help him cross the camp.  He winces a lot, but doesn’t complain, and BB-8 keeps up a constant stream of chatter which helps to distract him.  Once on board, Finn deposits him in the co-pilot’s chair, and takes the pilot’s position for himself.  It feels strange, and the ship has more switches and levers than seems reasonable to him.  </p><p>“I thought you said this thing was easy to fly.”</p><p>“Piece of cake,” Poe says.  He has pain-lines sitting round his eyes, but lounging in the chair, he looks somewhat more like himself. He moves his bandaged hands over the ignition sequence, letting them hover just short of touching the panel.  Even with his damaged hands, his movements are fast and fluid, and when Finn tries for himself, he feels like someone with two left feet trying to copy a dance.  </p><p>“Good,” says Poe. “Though you are allowed to touch the buttons.”</p><p>“Right.” Finn tries again, hitting the switches this time. There’s a tactile satisfaction to it as they thunk and click, and he waits for the engines to roar into life.  But the ship stays still and asleep.  </p><p>“Hit the thruster unlock,” Poe tells him.  “There.  Above that one.  Okay, you got it.  Try again.”</p><p>Finn goes through the sequence again.  The ship coughs and heaves and the engines kick in, thrumming against his hands and through the fixings of his seat.</p><p>“Now, that lever there. It might feel like it won’t move at first, but it will.  Bring it towards you.” </p><p>Finn puts his hand on it.  It’s like grabbing hold of a living thing. One that doesn’t like him much. He starts to pull.</p><p>“There you go,” Poe says. “Now, she kicks, so keep it nice and smooth.  If the hull starts to rattle – like that – just bring it back a touch.  Don’t try and force it.  She’ll kick you back.” </p><p>She kicks like a wild fathier, in fact. The ship shudders so hard Finn’s hand hurts.  The pitch of the engine rises to a painful whine, and starts to clatter like something’s come loose.  The whole ship lurches, then the engine cuts and dies.  It sits ticking hot in the loud silence. BB-8, shaken from his spot by Poe’s chair, lets out a stream of beeps.</p><p>“Don’t listen to him, he’s a critic,” Poe says.  “That was mostly fine.”</p><p>“Apart from the part where we actually take off?”</p><p>“Yeah, that part needs work.”</p><p>Finn sighs.  He’d been hoping he might discover a hidden talent.  Clearly not.</p><p>“It looks so easy when you do it.”</p><p>Poe shrugs.  “Practise, is all.  Anyway, this thing is like flying a brick.  I’ll take you up in an X-wing sometime, you’ll never want to fly anything else.”</p><p>“Flying a brick might be more my style.”  Finn leans back in his seat. “So, what does Kalonia say about when you can fly again?”</p><p>Poe makes a vague gesture.  “I don’t know, I didn’t ask yet.”</p><p>Finn swivels in his chair to look straight at him.  “Seriously?  I thought you’d be driving her insane asking.  Don’t you want to know?”</p><p>“I do, but…” he shrugs.  Doesn’t meet Finn’s eye. “I don’t know. I know my hands are fucked, I don’t really need a lecture about it.” </p><p>“She might tell you they’re not as fucked as you think.  You know you’re gonna fly again, right?”</p><p>“Sure,” Poe says.  But he doesn’t sound convinced.  He goes to touch his fingers to his temples.  Stops.  “Look, it was a bad day.  I don’t need another replay.  That’s all.”</p><p>Finn doesn’t know what to say to that.  Poe’s eyes flick off sideways and get caught by the floor.  He quickly corrects himself, but Finn sees it, and it makes his stomach sink.  </p><p>“Poe,” he says, then stops.  Poe will just say what he always says. That it’s nothing.  Nothing there.  Finn feels out of his depth with him sometimes.  Scared of making it worse, by pushing, or not pushing.  After a moment of silence, Poe meets his eye. He looks a little sheepish.</p><p>“Okay, there is another reason too.  Don’t snitch on me.  But I figure if I don’t ask, she can’t tell me no.  I know what I need my hands to do better than she does.  I’ll decide when I’m ready.”</p><p>Finn laughs, and some of his tension lifts.  “Now that sounds like something you would do.  Good luck getting away with it.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know, she’s probably onto me already, but it’s worth a shot.” Poe returns his smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  He looks tired as hell, and he shifts in his seat like something hurts.  </p><p>“Are you okay?”  Finn asks him.  “Pain-wise, I mean.”</p><p>“Yeah.  Yeah.” Poe waves him off, then seems to lose all his strength to lie. “If I told you how much my head hurts, you’d drag me straight back.”</p><p>Finn nods.  He feels deflated.  “Maybe this was a bad idea.”</p><p>“It wasn’t.  At all.  I’m just… I’m a walking bad idea right now. Well, not really walking.”</p><p>He makes that little aborted gesture again, where he tries to touch his face, but can’t.  “Listen, it’s kind of hot in here.  Could we maybe get some fresh air?”</p><p>“Sure.”  Finn helps him back down the ramp and out into the warm outside.  Poe props himself against a tree, then slides down so he’s sitting at the base of it, cradled by the roots.  He looks upwards, into the canopy.  Sunlight filters through the leaves.</p><p>“You know what,” Finn says, as he settles beside him.  “I’ve never climbed a tree.”</p><p>Poe looks at him sharply.  “What?”</p><p>“You asked me before.  Then you fell asleep before I could answer.”</p><p>“Oh.  Right.” Poe frowns, a small frown like he’s forgotten something.  The air is heavy and warm, and his hair sticks to his forehead.  Finn, without really thinking, reaches out to brush it back.  Poe doesn’t object to his touch, so Finn keeps his hand there, resting just above his hairline.  He can feel peaks and troughs in Poe’s thoughts, like a rough sea.  He tries to smooth it.</p><p>Poe shifts, like some small pain is bothering him. Gives a little jerk of his head and shakes Finn’s hand off.  Finn withdraws with a guilty start.  His heart pounds with the strangeness of it.  It felt so natural, and he did it without thinking, like fixing a hair out of place.  He opens his mouth to speak, and lets it hang.  He can’t tell how much Poe felt it. If it was just a small irritation, or something more.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, after too long has passed.  He can pretend for he means for the touch, if Poe doesn’t know.  But Poe just shrugs.  Doesn’t look at him.  He’s wandered off in his own thoughts.  Finn sits with him in silence.  Becomes fixated on the space between their bodies. Wants to optimise it, so he’s close enough to feel close, but not too close for Poe.  </p><p>“Can I ask you something?” Poe says, abruptly. He frowns at the ground. “Do you ever wonder what your real name is?”</p><p>“Finn is my real name.  Don’t tell me it’s not.  It feels like you’re taking it back.”</p><p>Poe snaps his eyes back to him.  He looks stricken. “No,” he says. “No, no, I’m sorry. I could never do that.  Not if I tried.  I know it’s your name.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Finn says. He wants to touch Poe’s arm, but he can read the rising tension in his body.  He keeps his hands to himself. “Don’t worry about it.  I know what you meant.”</p><p>Poe shakes his head, like he can’t believe himself.  “I’m sorry,” he says again.  “You know what, I wasn’t even thinking about you when I asked that, so that wasn’t fair.  I should think before I… well, before I do anything.  I didn’t mean to say anything about you.”</p><p>“Poe, look at me.”  Finn waits until he has his eyes. “It’s fine. Don’t beat yourself up.  It’s just… I have what I have.  You get that.  I know.”  He doesn’t want to build a life based on what he’s missed out on.  He loves what he has.  His friends.  His purpose.  His name.  </p><p>It seems to cost Poe physical effort to keep looking at him.  So much so that he shuts his eyes.  Nods his head.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I get it.  I know.”</p><p>He’s still tense and twitchy, though.  Finn wants to bite his own tongue.  He’s the one who should think before he speaks.  Poe is feeling his way round the edge of something, something he can’t talk about or face head-on.  Finn wants to ask who Poe was thinking about, if not him.  But he has an unfair advantage now.  Poe might tell him just because he feels bad. Because he thinks he owes Finn something.  That’s not how Finn wants to know.  </p><p>“C’mon,” he says, instead.  “I know you don’t want to go back, but do it for me.  Kalonia’s going to come after me.”  </p><p>He means it as a joke, but Poe seems to take it hard. He shuts his mouth tight like he doesn’t trust himself to speak.  When Finn helps him up, his movements are awkward and stiff, and even BB-8 can’t raise a smile from him.  Back in the med-tent, he agrees to Kalonia’s offer of a sedative, like he’s just so sick of the real world he can’t wait to get out.  Finn sits with him until he falls asleep.  Feels like he’s failed at everything he’s tried today.  Stones, ships, and spirits, all beyond his power to lift.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Finn dreams he is alone in the dark.  That he has been taken in the night, away from his bed in the camp, away from his friends, and the warm air, and the sound of night birds calling.  None of that was ever his.  It wasn’t real.  Just a wish. A lonely, quiet dream, that he can share with no one.  He’s FN-2187.  He’s not allowed to want things.</p><p>He has been here before.  Spent nights and days trapped here, in a small dark cell that closes around him like a clenched fist.  There is no chink of light, nothing but the sound and the scent of himself, his own sweat, his beating heart, his shallow breath. Who was he ever kidding? He can’t have friends.  This is what becomes of them.  Swallowed by the dark, this crushing dark, which comes alive, and creeps into everything, creeps into his mouth and nose, and grows cancers inside him.  </p><p>Sometimes, the walls of his cell seem to crowd so he can’t breathe. Other times, they seem to lift away, so he’s lost in space.  He starts to drum his feet on the floor.  He drums his fists.  He knocks on the wall.  It’s not a protest or a call to escape, he just needs to touch something.  Time loses all meaning. He does it for days, until he’s foot-sore and hand-sore and can’t hold a rhythm, then he does it some more.  </p><p>And then someone knocks back.</p><p>He knows he is dreaming then, because this has happened before.  He freezes, just as he did before, his hand raised on the way to a knock of its own.  He holds his breath. His heart skips. He waits, and the darkness waits with him.  The knock sounds again.  Hesitant but urgent. Someone reaching out, in the cell beside his. He knows who it is. Knows with that uncanny, tangible certainty that lives inside him sometimes. </p><p>Years ago, when this happened in life, he never knocked back.  But in dreamspace, he has a second chance. He breaks free of his freeze, and hits his fist on the wall, returning the same disjointed, desperate rhythm.  A signal.  A call.  But he knows before the echo fades that it’s trap.  He was never alone in this place. They are watching him, listening in.  To see if he has learned to comply.  He has failed, and he’ll stay in the dark until it swallows him whole.</p><p>He wants to cry out, but he has lost his tongue.  Finn folds himself up, knees to his chest. The darkness presses against him. It has presence and weight. He hears a scream. Hears Poe scream, a horrible, hoarse, exhausted scream, like he’s been doing it for hours. He sounds so close, but Finn will never find him.  Is not allowed to find him.  They’ll punish them both.</p><p>He wakes in his bed, like breaking through the surface of the sea. Gasps for breath.  It’s dark.  Dark, and his blanket is tangled around him, sticking to his clammy skin.  He fights himself free.  Tries to get a handle on himself, on where he is.  There are dim lights around the camp, a few people still awake, and the jungle sounds of rustling trees.  He is home.  Safe and free, and so is Poe.  </p><p>But it’s not enough just to tell himself that.  Something has shaken loose inside him.  He has not thought of that dark place in years.  His sore hands, his silent shame.  The night air crawls on his skin.  He can’t just lie back down alone.  He rolls out of bed and runs across camp, soft and fast on his bare feet.  </p><p>There is not much light in the med-tent.  He sees Poe on the bed, lying on his side, the landscape of him in silhouette.  The medical droid, standing guard, clicks and whirs and turns gimlet eyes towards him.</p><p>“Poe?” he whispers loud.</p><p>“Finn?”  Poe’s shape shifts.  He sits up.  He doesn’t sound like he was sleeping.  “What’s going on?  Is something happening?” </p><p>“No, nothing’s happening.  I just… I woke up, and I wanted to see you.  I needed to see you.  I hope that’s okay.”</p><p>“Sure.  Sure.  Finn, you’re shaking.”</p><p>He is.  His teeth are chattering, his voice coming in shudders.  </p><p>“Shit,” he says.  Poe reaches out to him in the dark. Finn reaches blindly back.  Catches his shoulders.  Pulls him into an awkward hug.  “Sorry,” he says, against Poe’s shoulder.  “I had a bad dream.  I know it sounds dumb.” </p><p>“Finn, you do not get to lecture me on what sounds dumb.  Come here.”  Poe shifts on the bed.  “Come on, I can’t get up, so you have to come to me.” </p><p>Finn, feeling clumsy and grateful, scrambles into the space Poe has made.  The shivers have convinced him he is cold, and he presses into Poe’s body heat, sensing his concern like a warm touch.  The medical droid chirrups in alarm.</p><p>“Shh,” Poe tells it.  “And don’t you dare wake the doc.  I’m fine, I just have a guest.” </p><p>Finn wants to laugh, a nervous, humourless laugh.  He keeps his eyes open so he doesn’t get lost in the dark.  Poe’s breathing is even and deep, and he tries to match it.  Every time he thinks the shivers are fading, a fresh shudder hits. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says.  “Like you don’t have enough of your own stuff to deal with.  I just… I’m not used to dreaming like this, I never really used to dream.  Now… it’s different, it’s just so vivid.  It’s like it’s really happening to me.  Like it’s happening again.” </p><p>“It’s fine,” Poe says. “Do you think I wouldn’t get it?  Of course I do.  Only reason I don’t end up in your bed is I can’t run across camp.”</p><p>Finn nods against him.  Some of his nervous laughter escapes.  He can’t shake the jangle of alarm, that this is wrong, he shouldn’t be here.  Apart from anything else, the closeness feels strange.  He’s not sure what to do with his knees.  Poe strokes his back, pressing with his wrist rather than the palm of his hand.  He hums a soothing sound, slightly off key.  Finn tries to mimic him, the arrangement of his body, where and how it’s okay to touch.  He strokes Poe’s back in turn.  Runs his thumb down the curve of his spine.  His shivers start to ease.  </p><p>“Were you okay when I came in?” Finn asks.  “You weren’t asleep.”</p><p>Poe exhales shortly.  “You don’t miss a lot, do you?  Yeah, I was awake.  That’s what I get for sleeping all day.” </p><p>Dim light catches in his eyes.  Finn wants to touch his face. It feels like too much.  </p><p>“I got all mixed up,” he says. “In my dream. I dreamed about you, and about someone I knew a long time ago.  I dreamed I could hear you screaming.  While you were gone, I dreamed… well, I dreamed about you too.”</p><p>“I thought about you too,” Poe says. “A lot.  Maybe too much.  I think I got kind of mixed up too.  There were stormtroopers… well, stormtroopers everywhere I looked, and every single time, every single one, I did this little mental double-take.  Like I thought it might be you.”  He blinks, and keeps his eyes shut for a little too long.  “I was really, really grasping at straws.  At anything.  I couldn’t stop.” </p><p>His voice doesn’t crack.  Not quite.  But there’s a raw note behind it that raises the hair on Finn’s arms. He thinks of drumming on the wall in the dark.  “They take everything away from you,” he says.  “You do what you do to survive.” </p><p>Poe is silent.  His hand stills on Finn’s back.  Finn gets the impression he’s folding in on himself.  Retreating to some watchful place.  Finn doesn’t want him to go.  He presses closer to Poe, pushing against him, until Poe can’t possibly ignore him.  Hears him swallow, the spit jump in his throat.</p><p>“I want to tell you something,” Finn says.  “Something I did.  Or didn’t do.  I’ve never told anyone this.  I’ve never had anyone to tell.”</p><p>Poe breathes out slow, like he’s trying to ground himself.  He says, “Sure.” Finn feels a twist in his chest.  Poe tries so hard for him.  Finn only has to ask him for something, and he’ll try and fight his way back.  </p><p>“Thank you,” Finn says.  For the effort.  For being here with him in the dark.  Poe twists his mouth in a half-smile which moves the shadows on his face.</p><p>“Sure,” he says again. “Could we just…” He shuffles a little, backwards from the press of Finn’s body. Finn’s hands slide to his shoulders, and Poe ends up with his hands resting in the crook of Finn’s arms. “Sorry.  I’d be fine with this… normally, I’d be fine.  You don’t need to move.  Just a bit of breathing space.”</p><p>“Sorry.” Finn adjusts himself hastily.</p><p>“Don’t say sorry.  It’s me, not you.”  He twists his mouth sadly again.  Takes a slow breath.  “Tell me your thing.” </p><p>Finn nods, but he stays quiet a moment, adjusting to their new position, waiting until he feels Poe relax.  Their bodies curve together like commas, arm’s length above the waist, but their legs are touching.  Finn has never shared a bed with anyone before, and he finds that he likes it.  The weight and the warmth of another body, close to his.  </p><p>“You ought to be the first friend I ever had,” he tells Poe. “If the First Order had their way.  They don’t encourage close associations.  That’s what they call it.  The violation that goes on your record.”</p><p>“They are scared of you guys,” Poe says.  Finn feels knocked off his stride.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>“You outnumber them, and you have guns.  I was thinking about it.  Well, I’ve been thinking about it. How they keep control.  Stop you from organising.  Stormtroopers, not you.  You know what I mean.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Finn says.  He’s never thought of it that way before. It feels like a fresh wound. “You’re right.  It’s all about control.  It’s hard to describe.  You don’t have choice. It’s not a thing that exists for you.  It’s like it gets strangled at birth.  You know I feel bad, somewhere in the back of my head, for being here with you?  Like, what if we get caught?”  </p><p>Poe shifts his weight.  Finn can feel his intense attention.  See the dark lines of his frown.</p><p>“When I got out, everything got turned upside down.  It’s like… you have this emotional muscle memory, you know?  But mine is all backwards.  Everything I thought was wrong is really okay.”</p><p>“But you figured it out for yourself.”</p><p>“Yeah.  But I didn’t get it right straight away.  I just knew I had to get out of there.  You’ve no idea how grateful I am I can’t fly a TIE-fighter, or I wouldn’t have even thought about taking you with me.” </p><p>Poe touches his knuckles lightly against Finn’s chest.  “It worked out okay.”</p><p>“Yeah.”  Finn’s mouth is suddenly dry.  He’s sure Poe must feel his heart jump.</p><p>“Close associations?” Poe says.</p><p>“What?”  Finn says, before he realises it’s a prompt to get him back on track.  “Right.” He scrubs a hand over his face.  It’s strange to say this stuff out loud.  There are gaps between the words, things he can’t say even to Poe. “Right.  They don’t want you to get close with each other.  You get moved around a lot.  No notice, just out the blue, you’re reassigned, you have to go.  They encourage this competitiveness between you.  You can climb the ranks by stabbing someone else in the back.  It… it works on you.  Gets so you don’t want to get close to anyone else.  It doesn’t feel safe.”</p><p>He has to stop.  Lets out a shaky breath.  Poe shuffles a little closer to him, closing a couple of inches of space.  Finn touches his forearm, trying to ground himself.  Feels a sensation like static against his fingertips.  Poe has a warmth and a fire to him that’s more than just body heat.  Finn strokes his forearm.  He can feel Poe’s focus shift to the touch.</p><p>He lifts his hand. He likes the sensation, but it doesn’t feel fair, when Poe can’t direct the same back at him.  He regathers the thread of his thoughts.</p><p>“There was someone I was barracked with once.  Didn’t know him well, and he got transferred, then I got transferred.  But we ended up back together on Starkiller Base, both working sanitation.  We worked opposite shifts, so I hardly ever saw him.  He started doing this… thing.  Like playing little pranks on me.  Hiding stuff.  Moving stuff.  Leaving a bucket so it would tip when I opened the door.  It pissed me off at first.  I started doing it back.  I know it sounds like nothing, but when you have nothing…”</p><p>“I get it,” Poe says.  </p><p>“It stopped being a prank.  At least for me.  It started to become like a signal.  Like saying hello.  Like saying, I was thinking about you.  But it was more than that too.  It was like this tiny little rebellion we had between the two of us.  Leaving things out of place, little jobs left undone.  I was good, you know.  This, and Jakku.  The only times I screwed up.”  </p><p>He stops again.  Feels like he’s poking at a raw wound.  All those stolen years of being good.  Poe, with each silence, is edging closer to him.  Finn finds his eyes in the dark.  </p><p>“We got caught. Of course we did.  I think they must have been watching us for a while.  I got thrown in isolation.  For days.  I don’t know how long.  They don’t tell you.  It’s dark, it’s pitch dark, and everything’s the same.  That’s what I dreamed about.  It’s like the darkness comes alive.  You get lost.”  </p><p>Poe nods.  He moves his hands towards Finn, offering them without touch.  Finn takes hold of him by the wrists.  Rubs his thumb against the soft skin over Poe’s pulse.  There is strength there.  A body that’s working to heal itself.  </p><p>“I started to knock with my fists. A rhythm on the wall.  Not for any reason, just to have something to do.  To feel something.  So I knew where the walls were.  Where I was.  I don’t know how long I did it for.  Hours, maybe.  Then someone knocked back.  In the cell next door.” </p><p>Finn shuts his eyes.  Shame sits inside him like a stone that he has swallowed whole.  “I knew it was him.  My friend. He was in isolation too, and he heard me.  Heard me, and he answered.  Called out.  I… I knew it was him, I just knew it.  No doubt.  But I also knew they’d caught us before.  And the dark was… the dark was eating me alive, I can’t explain it, but I had to get out, and I was so scared.  Scared that if I answered him, they’d know it, and they’d leave me in there, for days longer maybe.  Forever.  Or do something worse.  You don’t have any power, you don’t have anything, the tiniest little freedom, and they take it from you…”</p><p>“I know,” Poe says.  “I know, I know.”  He has closed the gap between them.  Finn holds tight to his wrists.</p><p>“I let them win,” he says.  “In that moment, I let them win.  I know it sounds weird, to focus on that one tiny moment, when I was their prisoner for years…”</p><p>“Not weird.  I know.” </p><p>“I never knocked back,” Finn says, low.  “My friend reached out to me, and I left him alone in the dark.  I never saw him again.  He got transferred.  I did my time in isolation, and I got out.  And I never left so much as a bucket out of place.  I was good.  All the way up to Jakku.  I did their dirty work for them.” </p><p>“And then you stopped,” Poe says.  “The first stormtrooper I ever heard of who stopped.  You survived, and you escaped. And you’re normal, and sane, and… you’re amazing, and someone should probably tell you that, every single day.”</p><p>Finn laughs, a shuddering laugh with tears behind it, at Poe’s serious tone.  He wipes his face, and it comes away wet.  On impulse, he touches Poe’s cheek with the same fingers.  Poe smiles at him.  A sad, earnest smile.</p><p>“I mean it,” he says.  “I don’t know how you did it.  You got out of there whole.  Who has strength like that?”</p><p>“I don’t,” Finn says.  “It isn’t me.  I think it’s because… because I could take a part of myself, and lock it away.  Keep it safe where they couldn’t find it.” </p><p>“That’s you,” Poe says.  “That’s still you.”</p><p>Finn keeps his fingers on Poe’s cheek until the tears dry.  Waits for some sign he’s overstepped, but Poe turns his face towards the touch.  Finn wants to give him something.  Some part of himself.  Some offering of trust.  “No,” he says. “I mean… I can feel things sometimes.  I know things.  I can do things.  Not much, but more and more.  I did it with the Force.”</p><p>He waits for Poe’s face to break with surprise, or close in a frown.</p><p>“That’s still you,” Poe insists.  He looks unmoved.  Finn lets his mouth fall open.</p><p>“Wait.  It was a huge deal for me to tell you that, and you can’t even pretend to be surprised?”</p><p>Poe shrugs.  Smiles his crooked, sad smile.  “I’m not as stupid as I look, you know.  Not all the time, at least.”</p><p>“No shit,” Finn says, and pokes him in the chest.  He feels light with relief.</p><p>“Does Rey know?”  </p><p>“No.  Just you.  And if you’re underwhelmed, she’s going to be like…” Finn waves his hands in imagined dismissal.  “It’s nothing compared to what she has.  But it’s something to me.”</p><p>“It’s something,” Poe says. “You should talk to Leia.  She’ll help you figure it out.”</p><p>“Yeah, I should,” Finn concedes.  Doesn’t want to tell Poe that he’s never spoken to Leia alone, and his stomach knots at the thought.  “How did you know?  Can you feel it when I – ”  He stops.  Suddenly awkward.  Doesn’t want to admit quite how often he’s been getting stuff from Poe.  “I don’t mean to do it,” he finishes, lamely.</p><p>“I figured,” Poe says. “And yeah, I felt it before, when you touched my head.  I – okay, don’t feel bad, but I know what it feels like when someone… does that, otherwise maybe I wouldn’t have noticed.  I didn’t feel much.  Just something.” </p><p>“Shit,” Finn says.  Blood drains from his face.  “You mean because of Kylo Ren.”</p><p>“Yeah, and I said don’t feel bad.  It’s not the same.  You don’t make it feel bad.  But I would prefer to keep some thoughts to myself, so if you can help it…”</p><p>“Sure, sure,” Finn says, hastily.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so new to this.  I wouldn’t ever do it on purpose.  It just happens sometimes.  I can’t tell what you’re thinking.  I can just tell that you are thinking.  Sometimes.  That’s all.”</p><p>Poe raises an eyebrow.  Quirks his mouth.  “Good to know.”</p><p>Finn touches Poe’s face again, carefully, to see if he’s still welcome.  It seems like he is.  He relaxes a little. Slides his hands to Poe’s shoulders.  Poe presses his forehead against his.  Finn feels him sigh through his nose.</p><p>“You’re tired,” he says.</p><p>“Basically always,” Poe says.  “No big deal.  Don’t go.” </p><p>“No,” Finn says.  He can’t imagine leaving.  Going back to his own bed.  Sleeping alone.  Poe is still for a while, his head down and his shoulders slightly hunched.  Finn thinks he has fallen asleep, until he speaks, out the blue.</p><p>“Your friend.  That little… rebellion you had.  Is that normal?  Does it happen a lot?” </p><p>“I don’t know.  I guess it must.  Little things.”</p><p>“Little slips of the mask,” Poe says.  He is quiet again.  Shifts on the bed.  “Do you think…” He trails off.  Finn waits.  “Say I’d escaped, and I took a stormtrooper with me.  But he wasn’t like you.  Nothing like you.  He’d done… bad things, all the things, all the things that they do.  Done it all, and he wasn’t sorry, and he’d do it again, but still.  There were slips.”  He stops again.  Shakes his head.  Shuts his eyes.  Wears a wince on his face, like it hurts him to think.  “I don’t know what I’m asking.  Forget it.  Never mind.”</p><p>Finn puts a soft pressure on his shoulder.  “Poe, are you talking about the person who sent us the transport manifest?”</p><p>Poe brings a hand up in front of his face.  “Yeah,” he says, from behind it.  “That was a pretty big slip.” </p><p>“A stormtrooper?” Finn says.  Poe doesn’t respond.  Holds his closed off posture like a slammed door.  Finn presses on his shoulder again.  “He saved your life.”</p><p>Poe speaks without moving his hand. “I don’t understand why.  I don’t understand anything.  I can’t explain it to you, please don’t ask me to…”</p><p>“It’s okay.”  Finn holds him close.  “You don’t have to explain.  It’s okay.”</p><p>“No, no, you don’t understand.  I keep flashing back there.  I can’t go back there.  I can’t keep doing this.  I don’t know what to do.”  His eyes are too bright.  Finn can feel his mounting panic through his hands.  It makes his own heart race.   Poe starts to squirm against him.  Not fighting him exactly, but the tension in his body compels him to move.  Finn plants his hands on either side of Poe’s face.</p><p>“Hey.  Come on.  Look at me.  You’re staying with me.  Going nowhere.  Understand?”  He breathes like Poe breathed for him before, even and deep, until Poe starts to mirror him, and his body goes limp.  He folds up into Finn, pressing his face against Finn’s chest.  His shoulders shake.</p><p>“I can’t do this,” he says. He sounds broken in two. “I didn’t want any of this.  I wish he hadn’t done it.  I know how that sounds, but it’s true.” </p><p>“Don’t.”  Finn’s heart clenches.  He cradles Poe’s head, twisting his hand into his hair.  “Don’t say that.  We need you here.  I need you.  They don’t get to take you away from me too.”</p><p>“I know, I know, I’m sorry.  I know how it sounds.  I messed everything up, I was mixed up, and stupid, and sad, and now I can’t keep anything straight in my head.  I miss him, and I don’t even know why.  I feel sick just saying that…”</p><p>He breaks up into sobs.  The turmoil inside him is like a raging storm.  Finn holds him as tight as he dares.  Presses his cheek to the top of Poe’s head.  Sheds some tears of his own, feeling useless, mourning for all the years he lost in the dark.</p>
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